Irreplacable
by kashkow
Summary: Just a little AU left turn for Irresistible. I had an idea and since it involved torturing John I went with it. Second half of story posted as separate story as nothing wants to work for me. Unbetaed! Chapters 1-8


Irreplaceable

By: kashkow

Author's Note: I loved the two episodes with Lucius, our favorite Pegasus Snake-Oil salesman. Mainly because both episodes put Sheppard out on the edge alone, having to fight for his friends and others. I had a thought when considering the two episodes, and decided to create this fanfic. It is not really a tag, but instead is an AU of Irresistible. I was wondering what if Sheppard's intervention with Beckett didn't work out, and what if Lucius was not quite as forgiving, bumbling, and mild as he was written. It starts right after Ronan goes to the mainland to retrieve Sheppard and Beckett. Yes, this is just an excuse to mentally and physically torture my boy, John. Your point?

Just a warning, I am posting this without betaing, since I have been dragging my feet for so long on this already, and I promised a friend that I would have one up by the end of the month. I didn't wish to force my long-suffering beta into a time crunch so here it is, in the raw. I don't lay claim to the title of "Comma Queen" for nothing. You'll see.

Author's note 2: Good Gosh!! I know that one is supposed to suffer for one's art but this is ridiculous! I can not tell you what I had to go through to get this uploaded. And to the fanfiction support crew...well, I'll just say it would be nice if you could have at least replied to ONE of my five emails...

Chapter 1-

Sheppard paced from one side of the cell to the other, not bothering to count the steps. He had already done that, along with finding the square root of the number to 23 decimals. That had gotten old quick. He had been in this cell for the last three hours, or more correctly, he had been conscious in this cell for the last three hours. He wasn't sure how long he had been there before that because no one had bothered to tell him how long he had been unconscious. In fact, no one had so much as bothered to drop by to do anything. Hell, even when they had kept Bob in here someone had dropped by regularly to just see that he was still there. He would have thought that he deserved at least as much courtesy as a Wraith.

Of course it seemed that everyone else here in Atlantis seemed to be of a different opinion. Since he had failed to join the Lucius fan club his stock had dropped among his fellow expedition members. In fact he had become something of the pariah it seemed. Whatever it was about that herb that Lucius had found that had everyone else completely enthralled, it did not seem to affect him. He was pretty sure it had something to do with his cold, but it could just as well be his gene. Beckett had seemed to be teetering on the edge there for a while, and Sheppard had thought that he had him, but obviously not, or he would not still be locked up here all alone. He wasn't sure what was worse, being locked up, or being alone.

He had always been a loner. Not the weird kind that made everyone draw away or wonder exactly when he was going to have a mental breakdown and start mailing bombs to people, but instead was one of those guys that didn't need a clique of sycophants to be cool. Not that he had been around anywhere long enough to be part of a clique. That would have required that he actually get to know someone. That was not easy when you moved so regularly. Even then he probably could have made friends if he had been able to invite people over. Dear old dad hadn't exactly been too welcoming to anyone, even his own son. The idea of having children that weren't even his around had been completely out of the question. The one time John had even asked, at the age of seven, had resulted in a tirade and a smack upside the head. So he had gotten used to being pretty much on his own, until he had come to Atlantis.

Here he had his team, and his friends, and even the rest of the expedition. He was never alone. He always knew he was part of something bigger than himself. He always knew that if anything should happen to him, someone would come after him, and even if he didn't survive someone would care, would miss him. He had come to value that. It seemed that he had been a little premature in his confidence however.

Being imprisoned, on the other hand, was becoming something of a hobby with him. He was almost to the point that he was prepared to start writing a guidebook to Pegasus Galaxy Prisons, Sort of a Michelin Guide to the best and brightest. He would rate each one for the really important things: Dampness of cell, degeneracy of the guards, types of torture offered, escape route availability. Everything the casual tourist would need to pick out just the right place to be incarcerated. He looked around. Right now this cell was rating only two and a half puddlejumpers out of a possible five. They were going to have to go a long way to catch up with the Genii prisons. You could never do better than dank and dark with just a piquant hint of deadly radiation.

He was making another pass and thinking about breaking out in his best version of Folsom Prison Blues when the doors to the corridor opened. He expected it to be Elizabeth, or Rodney, or Teyla, or if the gods of the Pegasus Galaxy were done laughing their asses off, a cured Beckett. But it was none of the above. Instead as the doors opened in marched Lucius in all his pudgy glory, followed closely by Ronan who seemed to have become the royal bodyguard and general dogsbody. Someone likely to take a punch at you? Call Ronan. Need an errant colonel returned from the mainland? Call Ronan. Heading in to interrogate said colonel? Bring Ronan. He was the all-purpose goon, and damn it, he was _Sheppard's_ goon.

Lucius paraded up to the bars and smiled beneficently upon Sheppard who scowled back at him. Ronan stood at Lucius' shoulder and looked at Sheppard like he was a Wraith, or something worse. This was not looking good.

"Colonel Sheppard, I must say I am incredibly disappointed in your behavior." The pudgy man smarmed at him. "Here you have put everyone to a lot of trouble for nothing. Why are you being so difficult? Everyone else loves me, why don't you?" The last question was asked seriously, with narrowed eyes. It really bothered Lucius that Sheppard was not falling under his spell. He wanted to know why Sheppard was different so he could make sure that others were not immune. There might even be a bit of ego involved. Sheppard was pretty sure that the man believed his own press.

"Look, Lucius, sorry that I put anyone out, but you have to admit that things are not quite right here. I'm sure that you're a great guy and all, but let's face it my friends have done everything but hand you the key to the city and elect you president for life. You've used them for a dangerous mission for your own benefit and you're treating the women like they were some kind of harem. At what point exactly did you think anyone was going to buy that this was all perfectly natural?" He asked. Lucius grinned at him.

"Why, everyone but you has absolutely no problem with it!" He declared. He turned to Ronan. "Ask your friend here. He sees nothing at all wrong with what is happening here. He understands that due to my advanced intelligence and skills that I am the best choice to lead the city of the Ancestor's. You need to get with the crowd my friend."

"I am _not_ your friend." Sheppard said forcefully, moving as close to the bars as he dared without getting shocked by the shield. Ronan pushed forward and got in his face with a growl. Sheppard did not step back. There had to be some benefit to being in a cell after all. Ronan-baiting was not a practice for the faint of heart or easily accessible. Lucius sadly shook his head.

"I was afraid you were going to be that way. In fact that is what I have been contemplating since Ronan here brought you and the doctor back. I've been looking over the lists of our personnel, and to be perfectly frank, I am not finding a position that would suit your particular talents. Since I am sure that I do not need to tell you that our resources are limited, I am sure that you will understand when I tell you that your services here will no longer be required."

Sheppard had bristled like an angry dog at the man' s continued use of the term 'our' and almost had missed the significance of what he was saying. However it soon made it past the anger and sent up a little 'hey you need to pay attention' flag. He narrowed his eyes.

"What the hell are you talking about? It's not like you're in charge here. You don't get to make personnel decisions. That is Elizabeth's job, and Rodney's, and yes, _mine_. Now if you won't let me out of here, bring them here. I want to talk to them." Lucius was shaking his head.

"That won't be necessary. The beautiful Elizabeth, who, I might mention, has consented to be my 7th wife, and the very, very smart Dr. McKay are busy taking care of things. We have discussed this, and they have agreed to take care of this the way that I suggested." Sheppard could not stop the expression that must have come across his face, and he saw a flare of satisfaction in Lucius' eyes. The guy was loving this. He struggled to pull his mask back into place and looked over at Ronan.

"And you, do you also think that letting this…man make decisions about things is a good idea?" he asked incredulously. The Satedan stared back at him with a set face, and from that Sheppard could see that he did in fact approve, and would back anything that Lucius did. The pilot licked his lips and shifted his gaze back to Lucius.

"So, you're here to give me my pink slip. So what do I do now? Clean out my desk, turn in my keys to the front door, collect my last check, and go stand in the Pegasus Galaxy equivalent of the unemployment line? It doesn't work that way Lucius. I was_ assigned_ here, by the United States Air Force. In case you don't know what that is, it is a military unit of the United States, a country on the planet that basically is in control of the Stargate program on Earth, and by connection, of Atlantis. No one can fire me but them, and while there are those who have tried, they have not succeeded. I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh but you are, colonel. We have decided that it will no longer be necessary to be in contact with your Earth. We have everything we need here on Atlantis, or within reach. We are safe from the Wraith, and we have plenty to eat. What more could a man ask for." Sheppard stared at him with his mouth open. The man had talked the others into cutting off communication with Earth? Just how freaking powerful was this damn herb? It was like hypnosis squared. He took a deep breath. Okay, he couldn't expect any help from Earth, and the Daedalus had just left for its eighteen-day trip to Earth, where they would be lying over for two weeks for a retrofit of their engines. So they would not be back for two months at the least. No help there. That meant that he had to deal on his own. Best to find out exactly what the plan was, and he was sure Lucius had one, the barely hidden smirk on the man's face said he was really proud of it too.

"All right, so what exactly does my severance package entail, and I hope that we aren't going to take that word literally." He said with a look at Ronan who had his sword strapped on his back like usual. He was visualizing something along the lines of an open wormhole to Earth, and a push through the event horizon with a fond wave from his, seemingly, former friends. If he was really lucky Lucius will have let them tell Earth he was coming first and he wouldn't go splat against the shield. However his expectations were soon crushed.

"Since I have reason to believe that you might attempt to…negatively impact the smooth running of the city, I am afraid that you will have to leave Atlantis. We can't have you running around causing trouble now can we? That would be very disruptive. Also, I've been told about your…heroic defense of the city last year, and quite frankly I just don't think it would be good for moral if you were around. Of course, I…we…can't take the chance of you making your way back here either." Lucius began walking around the cage talking as he talked. Ronan remained standing where he was, eyes never leaving Sheppard, and wasn't that unnerving given the topic of conversation.

"We have discussed a variety of options, and I have to tell you I was quite frankly amazed at the esteem in which your former colleagues hold your talents. It seems that you are a dangerous man. This being the case, your sudden retirement has been something of a difficulty for me…us. We had to find just the right place to send you so that we didn't have to be concerned with you popping back up sometime in the future and trying to…liberate the city. Yes, it was quite the problem."

"Well I really feel for you there. I have a few suggestions that might make your life easier, like maybe you let me out of here and you tell me how to reverse the effect of whatever this herb is that has everybody jumping through your hoops."

"Oh let's not be that way, colonel. The herb means nothing; it's just a little something I use for a…medical condition. I don't understand this antagonistic thing you have going here. Is it so hard to believe that I am what I appear to be, an incredibly smart and handsome man that just happens to know what needs to be done to return the City of the Ancients to its former glory?"

Sheppard stared at him in amazement. Could this man really be _that_ convinced of his own press?

"Yes." He answered succinctly. It would probably have been a good idea to try to curry a little favor here, but for some reason he could not bring himself to do it. It would be like making nice to a Wraith queen. It just wasn't something that he could do. Lucius scowled in response.

"Somehow I thought that was what you would say. And so did the others. They said you were stubborn and that once you made up your mind that was it. Soooo, we found you a nice little planet in really pleasant portion of the galaxy. It's kind of out of the way, so you shouldn't have to worry about any Wraith showing up, in fact I'm pretty sure that no one goes there at all anymore. Of course that's probably because of the problem with the dialing device." He let his words sink in, watching Sheppard's face for some response. Somehow the pilot managed to not show his dismay at the man's words. They were going to strand him on some backwater planet with no gate access. He raised his chin and stared at Lucius.

"And what about the natives of this little forgotten paradise? Won't they be a bit put out by the tourist who comes and stays without a passport or even a tourist visa? They can get a bit picky about that where I come from." He said.

"Oh there's no one else there. We took one of those delightful flying machines and checked it out. Like I said no one goes there anymore. There're various legends about it, and no one wants to take the chance that they may be true. Whoever was there must have just…died or something. Maybe the Wraith got them, or they found another way off the planet. In any event, you'll just love it." He was like a used car salesman trying to make some old clunker sound attractive. Sheppard wasn't buying it. He looked at Ronan

"Let me get this straight, Chewie. You and the others are going to let this guy strand me on an abandoned planet with no gate access. Surely you cannot be that far gone." He pleaded. Ronan eyes him stonily.

"You brought it on yourself, Sheppard. All you had to do was go with the flow. You could have stayed." The Satedan said.

"'Go with the flow'"? Sheppard parroted. "Where the hell did you get that? And since when are you an advocate of going with any flow? You are the poster boy for doing your own thing. Why all of a sudden are you Lucius' shadow? Where's that rebel that we all know and love?" Dex shrugged.

"It's Lucius. He's worth it." With that Sheppard stepped back and finally had to face the fact that his friends had literally thrown him under the bus. Lucius had told them that it was the thing to do, and they were prepared to do it.

"I want to see Elizabeth and the others. I want them to tell me to my face that this is their decision." He demanded. There had to be a way to talk them out of this. To make at least one of them see what was going on. They couldn't want to abandon him…they were his friends, his family.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible." Lucius said. Elizabeth and Teyla, who by the way has consented to be my eighth wife, are making plans for the weddings. Dr. McKay is working on a way to reroute some power to the hydroponics labs so that we can begin growing a few things that I need for my formulas. He's being very helpful about things. Dr Beckett is helping me to make them even more effective by combining them with your medicines. I am really looking forward to trying them out on some of Atlantis' allies. I think that they'll be really happy to trade with us then. Yes, a golden age is coming to the City of the Ancients. The age of Lucius." Sheppard made a fake gagging noise, winning him a scowl from Ronan and Lucius.

"Now, now, Colonel. Let's not be bitter. You had a chance to be part of it, but you made it clear that you were not willing to be a team player."

"I've never been very good at that." Sheppard noted. His mind was whirling. "So what are you going to do, just dial it up and throw me through?"

"No, no. I'm not an uncivilized man, colonel. Could I call you John? It's so impersonal calling you by your rank."

"I prefer it that way. My _friends_ call me John." That got him a scowl. Score one for the prisoner. Yeah.

"Very well, _Colonel_. As I was saying, I am not uncivilized, and your friends are insistent that you have the things you need to survive. We'll permit you to take what you want from your quarters, and we'll provide you with a reasonable amount of foodstuff and supplies to help you while you adjust to your new home. We'll include some seeds so that you can plant your own crops, and I'm sure that there will be animals for you to hunt for food. We'll even provide you with weapons, after you go through the gate of course. Wouldn't want you to get any ideas. I understand that impulse control is something that you struggle with."

"Yeah. I often get these impulses to beat the living crap out of someone, and you never know when that will hit. Right now for instance." Sheppard bit his lip. His emotions were all over the board. Angry, scared, sad, forlorn, lost. Damn but he hadn't expected this. He figured that they would keep him locked up for awhile, but then the herb would wear off, and they would kick Lucius' butt back to that planet they had found him on. Didn't seem to be working out that way.

"Ronan and a few of the Marines are going to take you to your room now. You'll have thirty minutes to put together what you want to take with you. I remind you that you will not be coming back. After that you will be escorted to the gateroom. We've already sent your supplies through, they'll be waiting for you when you get there." Lucius started for the door, but then turned and looked at Sheppard with a benevolent smile. "Just so you don't think ill of me, you'll be given a radio and we'll dial in occasionally. Just to make sure that you're okay. Maybe send a few things through to make things easier for you." With that he waved and made his way out. Three marines, led by Lorne came in as he left, and stood with guns ready as Lorne lowered the shield. Ronan motioned for him to step out. He looked from his 2nd in command's face to the Satedan's and seeing nothing there he stepped forward until the Marines surrounded him.

They started down the corridor toward the transporter. He thought briefly of making a break, but while he might take the Marines, there was no way he would take Ronan, and the big guy would not hesitate to shoot him, he had more than demonstrated that fact. So he allowed himself to be herded into the transporter and then to his quarters. As far as he could tell nothing had been disturbed, but there were now two duffle bags sitting on his bed. Evidently it was everything that he wanted that fit in two bags. Ronan and Lorne came into the room with him, with the rest staying outside. It seemed they were taking no chances.

He gave another thought to making a break for it. Possibly with Atlantis' help he could get away and into the unexplored parts of the city, but then it would be a constant game of hide and seek to stay ahead of the search parties that he knew would come for him, and a constant effort to remind the city that whatever McKay might do that he was not to show up on the sensors. Then he would still have to eat and sleep, and that would make him vulnerable. Eventually he would be caught, and given that Lucius seemed to be ever so slightly vindictive, his fate might be worse than exile to some empty planet. That plan abandoned, he started pulling clothes out of his closet and dresser. He had no idea what kind of climate this little bit of paradise that Lucius described might have, so he better pack for any eventuality. He noted that the knives and weapons, just a few extras, that he kept for emergencies, were gone, even the one he had taped up on the ceiling of the closet where the light didn't reach. Wasn't that a kick in the pants?

He pretended that he hadn't been looking and rapidly finished packing his clothes. That took up all of one and part of the other duffle. He then pondered the rest of his stuff. Well the computers and DVD's wouldn't do much good for him with no power source, so those were out. The skateboard would be useless, as would his golf clubs. It was so hard to find a good course on your typical backwoods planet. Not even a good driving range to be found usually. He threw in a few of the books he had accumulated, preferring the feel of the actual book to the computer version. He started to pick up War and Peace, but on second thought he dropped it back on his nightstand. He had brought that to read here, on Atlantis, and he would not take it anywhere else. That would be admitting that he didn't think he was ever coming back. He scooped up some notebooks that he had and some pencils and pens that were in his desk. He stared to pull out his tape recorder, thinking that he could maybe do the John Criton thing, but then decided against it when he remembered that batteries were going to be rather scarce. How had Criton gotten around that anyway?

He went into the bathroom and gathered his toiletries. He was glad he had never gotten into using an electric razor. He hesitated at the deodorant, but then threw it in. There might not be anyone else to offend, but he needed to stay civilized for himself. He took a couple of the towels that were hanging there and a few washcloths. No telling what the bathing facilities were going to be, but at least he could keep clean. Taking those things out he dumped them in his second duffle. That just about topped it off, and he looked around the room to see what else he might want. His eyes fell on his Johnny Cash poster. Well, he could take it, but where exactly was he going to hang it, on a convenient tree? Even if he could find shelter, he would probably just end up using the paper to start a fire or something, and he couldn't do that to that to The Man. He decisively closed the bags and picked them up. With one in each hand he turned and face Ronan and Lorne who had not moved from where they had stopped inside the door. He tried to think of them as simply soldiers, doing their jobs, not people that he had counted among his friends. He was not successful.

"Let's get this over with." He growled. He thought he saw something flicker in Ronan's eyes, but it was gone in an instant, and there was nothing else to do but follow the man out of the room. Once they were in the corridor he looked back at the now closed door. He wasn't sure if he was ever coming back here. This had been more of a home to him than anywhere else had been for more years than he could remember. He didn't like to think of someone else using it, especially that fat bastard Lucius. Of course maybe he was just bitter. He sent a thought to Atlantis, and felt the satisfying click in his head. Lorne must have felt it too, because he looked around at the door and then back at Sheppard.

"What did you do?" he asked. Sheppard shrugged.

"Just locked the door. There are still some things in there that are mine. Seemed prudent to lock up. Maybe I should have left a light on so it looked like someone was still there. I did stop the paper and the mail, but you know how burglars can be. Maybe I need one of those alarm company stickers for the door or a barking dog recording. Wouldn't want to worry about the place when I'm on my extended vacation." He snarked. He knew this wasn't them, but he couldn't help it. It _was_ them in a way. Lorne rolled his eyes and indicated that he should move on.

Five minutes later they were in the gate room, and the gate was already engaged. He knew that it was the middle of the night, so it was not strange that there was almost no one in the control center, but he was disappointed to see that not one of his friends were there. He would have at least expected McKay to show up. Lucius however had put in an appearance and was doing his smarmy best to look like he was genuinely sorry that it had come to this. He was failing miserably as far as Sheppard was concerned.

"Ah, I see you are ready to go, Colonel. One last chance though, before you go through. Give me your word that you will make no attempts like your previous one with Dr. Beckett, and I'll allow you to remain here with us. We can all be one big happy family." He gave a blinding smile. Sheppard swung one of his duffels down from his shoulder, just barely missing the other man. Without looking at anyone he slung it through the event horizon and then repeated it with the other. He turned to Lucius.

"You said I could have weapons." He reminded the other man, ignoring his offer. Lucius shrugged philosophically as if he hadn't really expected Sheppard to agree anyway and motioned a Marine to step forward. The Marine offered Sheppard a pistol, which he took. He knew right away by the weight that there was no clip.

"The ammunition is already there with your supplies. There are also a few knives and one of the weapons the Marines call a rifle." Sheppard nodded and stuffed the pistol in his waistband since they had taken his holster. Maybe they had put one with the supplies. He looked around the gate room, at Lorne and the familiar techs working at the consoles. He let his eyes follow the sweeping architecture up and around. How he had come to love this place, these people. His eyes completed the circuit and came to rest on Lucius. He wasn't sure what it was that the other man saw in his eyes at that moment, but it made him take several steps away from the pilot. Sheppard smiled at him, a twist of his lips with no humor. Ronan gave him a push toward the gate. Sheppard switched his gaze to his teammate, and he saw nothing of his friend in the dark eyes. The big hand came up and pushed him toward the gate again.

"Ronan…" he started to say, then cut himself off. No, he was not going to beg. Before the Satedan's hand could push him again he raised a hand for a casual wave, and with nothing more than that walked through the wormhole to his exile.

Chapter 2-

He emerged in hell. Okay it wasn't hell, but he was sure he would be forgiven his bad attitude regarding his exile. Napoleon had probably not been particularly fond of Elba either. He tried to cheer himself up with just what Napoleon had done about that dislike. Of course he wasn't a seventeenth century emperor with a bunch of loyal followers, but who was counting?

The sun had just been rising on the western-yes, he knew that it was an arbitrary reference here, but since this was to all intents and purposes his planet he could call it what he wanted-horizon, marking his first day on the planet. He had turned to look at the stargate, hoping that someone, anyone, would follow him through and say it was all a mistake, a practical joke. Or, barring that improbability, that someone would come with him, that they wouldn't leave him alone here. But no one else came through, and the gate shut down with a finality that seemed even more pointed than usual. He wasn't sure how long he stood there staring at the empty circle, but the increasing light finally made him conscious of the passing of time. Unprepared to take anything Lucius said at face value his first move was to go to the DHD and try to dial the Alpha site. Not one of the symbols lit up, and there was no event horizon formed. It just sat there. Well at least Lucius had been telling the truth about that. He pulled off the access panel as he had seen McKay do time and again, and instantly saw the problem. The main control crystal was gone. Without that there would be no dialing. He knew that there was some way to dial without the DHD, but that involved a lot of energy, and a lot of know how that he was sadly lacking in. He turned away with a sigh and went back to surveying his new kingdom.

Well, no time like the present to check out the new digs he had decided. Before he started his recon he went to the small pile of supplies that were stacked about twenty feet from the gate and dug around. So much for Lucius generous nature. He was happy to find a holster and a good supply of ammunition, both for his M5 and the M16 that was leaning against one box. Not his weapon of choice, but it would do. He decided to take both weapons for now and started toward the edge of the clearing where the gate was located. At the edge of the clearing were the nearly ubiquitous pine trees that seemed to inhabit every planet that the Ancients had graced with a gate. He was beginning to wonder if there had been some 'Beautify the Pegasus Galaxy' program something like Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification Program in the sixties, going on with the Ancients. Put in a gate, and toss a few handfuls of pine tree seeds out on the land and move on.

Deciding that further speculation regarding the foliage wasn't getting him anywhere; he located a path that due to its size he suspected must have been made by something other than the local animals. Closer inspection showed him that the path was in fact paved with flat stones, now grown over with a layer of moss. It could have been ten days, ten years, or ten thousand years since it had last been used. No help there. It led off to the east, disappearing into the woods that seemed to get thicker as far as the eye could see. Looking around he could see no other paths, so that limited his choices. Lifting the M16 he started down the path, his ears and eyes scanning constantly. Just because the gate didn't work didn't mean there was no one around, it just meant that they didn't get out much.

It turned out that there wasn't anyone, at least not anywhere that he needed to worry about in the immediate future baring any travelers through the gate who hadn't gotten the memo about the DHD failure. When he had followed the path for five minutes he had come out of the forest to find himself on the edge of a cliff overlooking what was either an ocean, or a very big lake, something like one of the great lakes. The cliff was almost two hundred feet high, and as far as he could see was sheer all the way down to the water. No beach here. He could also see the land curving about a mile on either side of him. The path turned and moved along the cliff in either direction. With a mental coin toss he turned right and started walking. It didn't take him long to realize that he was moving in a big circle. Walking at his regular pace he found himself back at the same spot just over two hours later. He estimated that the island, roughly oval in shape, was about three miles long on a side. The view had been much the same for the most part with two notable exceptions.

On the far side of the island he had come to a place where the smooth cliff had given way to a prominence that led out into the sea. It ran for almost three hundred yards before it ended abruptly in a jagged landslide that the sea had partially eaten away in the lower part. In the distance, he could barely make out what appeared to be either another island, or perhaps it was the mainland on this planet. It seemed to be bigger than his own current digs in any event, even though all he could see was a dark shadow on the horizon. One thing he could make out was that there appeared to be another prominence, the other end of what he could only call a land bridge jutting out from the other land mass. Evidently there had been a heck of an incident at some time or another in the past. Maybe an earthquake, a really large wave, or maybe something less natural, like a few drones, or the Wraith equivalent. This might explain why the gate had been rendered useless. There was no way for anyone get to the mainland from here without flight capability or a boat, and that seemed to be a bit of a stretch for most Pegasus inhabitants.

The next exception to the cliffs was a small cove accessible via a branch of the paved pathway switch backed down the cliffs. He had followed it down to the sand, and had gone forward to the water. He had dipped in a finger and had found the water salty and surprisingly warm. The air temperature was slightly cooler than what he would call comfortable. But obviously this sea had some warm currents feeding this area. That should mean that there would be plentiful sea life for him to use as food. At least he wouldn't have to live off roots and berries when his MRE ran out. On his way back up the hill he had found his new home.

He hadn't seen it on his way down because vines that were growing down the cliff obscured the opening, but as he had climbed back up the path he had caught sight of something that wasn't the same color as the dark rock that made up the island, something familiar looking. As he approached he had felt it, that tingle in the base of his skull that said that Ancient technology was nearby. Almost as soon as he had pushed the vines aside he felt that peculiar tingle that meant that whatever was behind that door was glad to see him. As he placed his hand on the metal of the door the tingle became a crescendo that almost drove him to his knees. This place was REALLY glad to see him. The door slid to the side and a gust of stale air burst out at him. Place needed a good airing out.

He stepped inside, M16 ready, and the lights came on. It was rather anticlimactic to realize that this was no Ancient complex cut way back into the cliff with labs and multiple levels. Instead it seemed to be a couple of rooms, one large, three small, and little else. There was a console in the main, large room, but he stayed away from it for the time being. He explored the three small rooms finding two of them empty of anything but dust. The third was a bathroom, which he was pleased to see. Bears might do it in the woods, but that quickly lost it allure as a life style choice. He returned to the main room and looked around. It wasn't Atlantis, but then nothing was. It was familiar in a way though, and if he had to be alone, and it seemed he was to have no choice in that, then at least he could have this. He took a last look around the main room and looked toward the door thinking about the view outside. Evidently whoever had created this place hadn't been interested, otherwise there would have been a big picture win…He broke off the thought as what had seemed to be solid wall suddenly dissolved into a huge window looking out over the cove. All right! He felt the facility practically squirm in anticipation of his reaction, and he let his appreciation flow. It was like he had praised a puppy. He was pretty sure that if the facility could have it would have piddled on his boots.

He left his new quarters with a promise that he would return, and had completed his circuit of the island with no more surprises. He made his way back to the gate, still no team, no friends, nothing that hadn't been there when he had left a couple of hours before. He was really feeling the love here. Not that he had really expected there to be. He started sorting through the supplies. He had enough MRE for about two weeks if he didn't find anything else to supplement them. If he held it to one a day then that would spread it out for a month. Of course he would not be worth much if that were all he had to eat. At least whoever had put the supplies together had some inkling of what was needed. There was a small stove and fuel to last for a good while if he stretched it. A sleeping bag and blow up mattress would at least assure him a warm and comfortable place to sleep. There were the other basic necessities, TP, matches, some pots and pans, a plate and utensils, etc. He also had his duffle bag.

Now he had to figure out how to get them to the facility in as few trips as possible. He wasn't kidding when he told people he was lazy. He might like to run, and he liked to keep himself in shape, but that's where his love of physical exertion ended. He found a heavy tarp that was rolled up near the bottom of the pile, and eyed the forest opposite where the path left the clearing. The ground was mostly covered by moss, and he figured that he should be able to drag a good portion of his supplies with him through the forest to the other side of the island. That way he would also get a feel for how wide the island was here.

Three hours later he was wiping sweat from his face as he looked around the facility again. He had all of his supplies there now. He had found that the island was just around two miles across at that point, and was mostly flat. His tarp idea had worked out, and he had only had to make two trips to get everything into place. He had hesitated as he had piled the last of the supplies onto the tarp back at the clearing, looking at the inactive gate. He was a bit torn. He was happy that he had found the Ancient facility to use as a shelter; it was the best he could have asked for, short of a city of people. But he also was finding himself reluctant to leave. What if they came looking for him? Would they look beyond the clearing? Would he miss them if they came and he wasn't here? Would they just leave?

He had found himself looking down at the radio he had finally found among the gear. He found himself wondering if it even worked. He would not put it past Lucius to have given him an inoperative unit. Then, if they did dial in for the promised radio check it would be "Well, I guess he doesn't want to talk to us. Too bad. No need to keep calling." He was pretty sure that Lucius would be just as happy if he were to drop off the face of whatever this planet was called and never be heard from again. In fact he was pretty sure that that was the plan. He was beginning to think that Lucius might not have liked him much.

Maybe he was meant to die alone after all. Maybe that was his fate, cheated too many times, through that weird luck that seemed to follow him. He stopped that train of thought right there. He was not going to think about dying here. He was _not_ going to die here. If only to spite that supercilious bastard Lucius, he was not going to die here. He had lived to spite someone before, and look how well that had worked out. His father hated him to this day. Lucius was a cupcake next to dear old dad.

Thoughts of dying firmly put aside he tucked the radio into his ear and dragged the supplies to the new shelter. As he trudged through the forest he gave his situation some thought.

He needed to get the lay of the rest of the island and see what was there. He really hoped that this was spring, because if this was fall then he was going to be a little cold and hungry through the winter. Which brought up the next question-food. So far his appetite had not shown up, though that was probably due to the developments of the day. Not one of his better ones.

If there were sea creatures, fish or mammals, he could survive on protein alone with some roots seaweed, or leaves added for his daily vegetable serving, the food chain in action. He just needed to figure out how to place himself at the head of that chain, while avoiding becoming a link in it. He had no proof that there were predators big enough to attack him, but even a small creature could be deadly. With the temperature of the island being so low it seemed unlikely that there were snakes, but as he had reason to know, there were probably bugs, and they could be even more deadly. He had to be on the look out, until he got to know this place. For now he probably needed to confine his wondering to daytime. He had a flashlight, and two sets of new batteries, but he would rather save them for emergencies. As it was there shouldn't be anywhere on the island that he couldn't get to and from in one day.

All in all this seemed a pleasant enough place so far: mild climate, no obvious predators, no hostile natives, warm waters, no smog, and warm sunshine. All very nice, and easily accessible on any number of planets that they had visited before, hell they had it on Lantea. What the hell had the Ancients built a stargate here for? Was this the Ancient equivalent of the Hamptons? Somewhere that Ancient yuppies went to build a summer home when Lantea got too hot and humid? Did Ancient ivy leaguers arrive in their puddlejumper/Winnabagos for the season and clutter up the island? There had to have been something here at one time, or why bother to drop in a stargate? Was it still here, or had whatever it was been used up, taken away, or was it somewhere over on the larger landmass that he could barely see? Would he ever know what it was? Would he even know it if he saw it?

Once he had everything in the main room he turned his attention to how he was going to spend his evening. Going to the movies was out, and the local bar had little appeal, though he could have done with a cold beer. A cold brewski not being forthcoming, he decided to work on his home. He was evidently going to be here a while, and he might as well be comfortable. This was prime real estate, lack of proximity to the gate aside. He decided that using the smaller rooms was senseless. It wasn't as if he had a lot of furniture to move in. And wasn't that a question that he had wondered about. Just what did the Ancients do with all of their furniture? Sure, there were a few chairs here and there on Atlantis, and the ubiquitous consoles, but what about the rest? Didn't they have the Ancient equivalent of a Barcalounger? What about a dining room table, a few barstools, a pool table, knick-knacks, anything at all? Had they packed it all off through the gate with them? If so where was it all? Someday was some archeologist gonna dig up an entertainment center in some ancient, with a small 'a', city?

He arranged his bed so that he could look out the window as he lay in it. He had found that the window was one way, invisible from the other side. In fact he was pretty sure that the whole vista was some sort of projection as he hadn't removed any of the vines from the outside of the wall but he couldn't see them. It was a real time projection though as he had watched some sort of small lizard scamper by the window and then by the door that he had left open. The place was still a little stuffy, and he was planning on leaving it open as much as possible. He didn't like to be closed in, though not in a claustrophobic way like McKay.

Thinking of his friend made a sudden flare of anger spike through him. He had been gone for hours now, and not so much as a 'how's the new house' call. Some friends. He pulled himself up at that thought. He had managed to avoid, evade, and ignore thoughts of why he was here for most of the day. It seemed that it hadn't worked out though. His subconscious had basically mulled the whole thing over and decided that everyone had turned against him, and thus were all to blame. Conveniently ignored was the fact that they were under the influence of some weird pheromone/herb thing that he didn't really understand. He sighed and looked around. Dusk was falling outside and the temperature was now in the 50's and falling quickly as the sun set behind the mainland to the East. As the temperature had dropped he had noticed that the winds had started. They were getting pretty strong, and he thought that he might have to close the door soon. The day had been only about 8 hours long.

He looked around at his pile of MRE and shook his head, still not hungry. He sat down on his air mattress, determining that he needed to find something to use as a chair if he was going to be here long. He lay back on top of his sleeping bag, thinking the lights down as he did so. The last of the sunset was fading over the cove, and the darkness was increasing. He lay there staring out at the scene and he finally let the morning's events seep into the forefront of his brain. He was the king of repression, no one had to tell him that. Usually he simply packed away the pain, the anger, the fear, into that dark cellar in the back of his mind. He slammed the door on it and ignored the pitiful cries of his subconscious. He'd suffered for it in the past, still did when he got sick, or extra tired, or stressed…all right, so it happened a lot. The dreams that haunted his sleep trotted out each and every fear, each pain, for his nighttime entertainment.

He had never spoken to anyone about the dreams. If he couldn't sleep he simply did something else. PT was always a big choice, or touring the base, reading, watching movies, playing his guitar. Anything to take his mind off the dreams and stuff the feelings back in the basement. It had worked for him until he had come to Atlantis, until he had met his team. Not that he would tell them about his dreams, heaven forbid. But he knew, as he knew few other things, that if he ever should want to talk about them, they would listen, either together as a group or as individuals, and when they were finished, if he wanted to do something about it they would help him. If all he wanted was for someone to listen, then that is all that would happen. And they would not think less of him for it. He had never had anyone who would do that for him. And now, those people were lost to him because of Lucius and his damn herb.

He reminded himself again that it was not their fault. Only Lucius was to blame here. They did not have any choice in the matter. '_But it happened so easily. They didn't fight it very hard._' There was that little bit of doubt, that little voice from that dark place, that voice that he could not help but listen too. He was intelligent enough to know that the doubts that plagued him were not for his friends, they were 100 about him. He had ample proof that he was imminently forgettable. His father had done it, so had his ex-wife. His former superiors had probably forgotten him as soon as he was off their base or out of their unit. Anyone who did remember probably did so to use him as a bad example. Come to think of it, that was probably how he was being remembered on Atlantis now. Lucius was sure to be reminding everyone who cared to ask how Sheppard had been a bad penny, causing discontent. He had assaulted Beckett, kidnapped him, and taken him to the mainland. He had tried to turn Carson against Lucius, and he had been violent. Boy, he was practically public enemy number one, a crime wave. No wonder it had been so easy for Lucius to talk his friends into believing that he needed to go.

A few minutes of such introspection maxed him out for the month, possibly longer. He studiously stuffed his anxieties in on top of the rest of the crowd and slammed the door. He was where he was because of Lucius. That was it. No more consideration needed. The only thing he could do now was live to spite the man, and try to figure out a way to get off this hellhole and take back his city and his friends. How exactly he was going to do it he didn't know, but he was determined to do it. He got into his sleeping bag and snuggled down into it. He thought the door closed as the last of the light slipped from the sky. There was little else for him to do right now except to brood. That wasn't productive, so he would sleep now and rise in a more optimistic mood, maybe. He hoped that his little turn into self-analysis would keep the dreams at bay for the night, but he didn't have a lot of hope. He closed his eyes and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

Chapter 3-

Dr Rodney McKay finished replacing the crystals in the actuator panel in the control room for the third, no forth, time in the last month. If previous experience was any guide, he would be doing it again within a week. He closed the panel and then turned to lean back against the console. He pulled on the half gloves that he had removed to gain enough control of his fingers to replace the delicate crystals. His fingers were now freezing and he welcomed the feel of the wool against his cold flesh. He breathed out, watching the warmth of his breath condense in the cold air of the control room. He guessed it was somewhat better than the labs. Without fail every lab in the city was sweltering, and it was not a dry heat. The humidity had to be approaching eighty percent in most of the labs, except in the botany labs where Lucius had been attempting to grow his herbs.

Despite every attempt to change it, the humidity there was approaching 100 percent, and the temperature was near 43 degrees Celsius. It was like being in a steam room. Every herb plant that Lucius and the botany personnel had attempted to plant had been rapidly overcome by the mold that was multiplying at a tremendous pace in the area on every surface. An attempt to replant the last of the sprouts that they had managed to salvage in a new area had resulted in the steam room effect expanding to that area. The walls were literally dripping with fungus and the air with moisture. McKay vastly preferred the cold of the rest of the city. You could put on more clothes, but you could only take off so much, at least and remain decent. He had yet to get the picture of Zalenka in green plaid shorts and a yellow wife-beater t-shirt out of his mind. He was pretty sure he needed some mental floss for that.

It had all began a month ago. He had been working on rerouting power down to the botany labs to allow for the grow lights that were needed along with the temperature controls for the rather picky plants, when the first system failure had started. It had been the water desalinization plants. Not one of them, all of them, all at once. It was practically impossible for the independent systems to have had the same glitch at the same time, but it had happened. He had been forced to abandon his rerouting and had spent almost a week working on the plants. Of course he could have solved that problem sooner if several smaller, but just as important systems hadn't started acting up at the same time.

So his month had gone. He had been moving from one crisis to the next, hardly able to get a few hours of rest in before the next one had him rolling out of his sleeping bag, the one that was rated for freezing weather, and heading for wherever he was needed most. None of the science teams were having a good time of it. His entire team, even Kavenaugh, was working around the clock to take care of the problems.

Lucius had been incredibly understanding, at least for the first two weeks. Since then he had been a little on the disappointed side, and Rodney was very, very upset about that. And to tell the truth just a little put out. He didn't want Lucius to think less of him because they couldn't bring the city under control, but really, he was doing his best here. Just this morning he had assured the man that they were almost positive that they had found the glitch in the main computer that was causing all of this, and could deal with it soon. He may have been just the slightest bit optimistic in that assurance.

It was true that Zalenka had found what he thought was a program running on the main computer that he did not recognize from before last month. The problem was that they really had no idea what it was doing, and where it had come from. Zalenka had preened like a peacock when Lucius had praised his skills at finding the program. McKay had been forced to watch as Lucius had practically fawned over the man. It wasn't as if _he_ couldn't have found the program, and probably a lot quicker than that Czech idiot, it was just that he had been busy keeping them all alive, and he dressed much better, I mean really green plaid and yellow, who wore that? Instead, he had been forced to sit and smile and nod as Zalenka had expounded on his brilliance. Of course it had been left to him to explain to Lucius why they couldn't just turn it off. But he had told him they would know how soon.

What he didn't know how to tell him was that the whole thing seemed to be the result of something that should be impossible. While they couldn't do anything about the program, they were able to trace it back to when it started. McKay had taken that information and had looked back through the records, and had found out what exactly was going on at that moment. What programs were running, who was accessing the computer, what machines had been activated. Since most of their concentration had been on updating the hydroponics labs at that point, and it had been very early in the morning, it had been easy to narrow the field to the only possible precipitating event. It had been the gate…well, not exactly the gate. The gate had been the only thing of note that had been active. In fact it was the last time that the gate had been opened to anywhere but the planet where they had found Lucius. That is before the gate shut down all together last week. He was working on that in his spare time, which he didn't have any of thank you very much.

Lucius was anxious to get back to that planet where his herbs grew. He had pointed out that there were lives to be saved, and he couldn't do it if he couldn't make his potions. Beckett had loudly and at some length, agreed that they needed to get those herbs, citing several diseases and their unpleasant side effects that might be cured by the wonderful potions that Lucius had showed him. In someone else the scene that Lucius had made when he realized that the gate was completely offline would have been very off putting, but this was Lucius, and McKay was sure that he was simply upset about all those diseased people that he couldn't help without the herbs, at least so he had told himself. He had shushed the small voice in the back of his head that had pointed out that the man was just a smidge on the histrionic side.

Rodney had looked at everything. Literally he had gone to every other machine that had been active at that moment and had looked at it. He had traveled to points in the city that they had not even had time to survey yet, and had…looked at them. But it was the gate, or more particularly who had gone through the gate. The program that was now making their lives so miserable, the program that shouldn't exist, that _couldn't_ exist, had started almost the exact second that John Sheppard had stepped through the event horizon. McKay had pulled up the security tapes with the time stamp. He had compared the two times. Just as Sheppard disappeared through the gate, the program began compiling. It was a large program, so it had taken some time before the effects had been big enough to draw anyone's attention, in the form of the desalinization system. Of course if he wasn't surrounded by idiots someone might have noticed the increased activity in the central processor while he had been occupied doing something important. He couldn't do everything you know.

But how was he supposed to tell everyone, how was he supposed to tell _Lucius,_ that the cause of all this was that the city was in a snit because Sheppard wasn't here anymore? Wasn't exactly the scientific explanation that one would expect of the Chief Science Officer of the City of the Ancients now was it? Not to mention the fact that Rodney was…conflicted. He had agreed with Lucius when he had pointed out that it would be best for everyone if Sheppard weren't there anymore. It was readily apparent that the man had some kind of weird antipathy toward Lucius, and didn't understand that the man was…well Lucius. And he knew how stubborn Sheppard could be. Once he had made up his mind, there was no changing it. It didn't matter how long they waited. Sheppard was not going to come around. If they had let him stay, then he would have been trying to find a way to turn them against Lucius, not that it would have happened. Unfortunately they had ample proof that a pissed off Sheppard was a force to be reckoned with. He might just try to convince them at first, but eventually he would have started doing…stuff. Everyone knew that the man liked to blow up stuff, or shoot it. It was only a matter of time before he had turned to domestic terrorism. So, when Lucius had pointed out that it would be best for everyone, Sheppard included, if the man where relocated to a nice little planet where he could be perfectly happy by himself, everyone had agreed.

But now it seemed that maybe it hadn't been so right after all. It seemed that while the people on the city might have decided that Sheppard had to go, the city had another idea. Unable to stop them from forcing Sheppard to leave, the city was now making it clear that it was not happy, and if the city wasn't happy, then wasn't no one going to be happy, as the song went. The fact that there were other gene carriers, Beckett, Lorne, Miko, and numerous others, still here, didn't seem to matter. That the city had the capability to do something like this was not anything that McKay had considered before. He tried not to think about the possibility that without Sheppard the city might never work correctly again. Lucius was not going to be happy to hear that. For just a moment, one tiny moment, he found himself not really caring that Lucius wouldn't be happy, but he shook it off. See, even the thought of Sheppard caused problems. He levered himself up off the floor and went to see if there was anything he could do to keep from having to make Lucius unhappy. He had a feeling he was wasting his time, but he had to try.

Chapter 4-

A month after that first night, Sheppard had given up on the pleasant thoughts. He had settled into a routine. He rose early, before the sun did, an occurrence that was coming later and later he noted, and did his circuit of the island on the path. The moss that had covered the stones was beginning to wear away as he used it each day. His watch had told him that the planet day was twenty-two hours, and he had adjusted to it quickly. He did his morning PT as the sun was rising, and then retreated to his cave to shower and shave. Not exactly roughing it, what with the Ancient facility and all, but still… His biggest challenge had been boredom.

He had ventured out that second day toward the south end of his island, now dubbed Elba in honor of Napoleon. He had walked over most of that half for most of the day, finding nothing. The next day he had done the same on the north side, and had found something that he had not been too surprised about, the ruins of a small city. Nothing impressive size-wise, probably a hundred people had lived here at most; there were few settlements of any larger size in Pegasus. The structures were little more than rock foundations covered in the ever-present moss. They could have been a hundred years old or a thousand, or ten thousand. He had the feeling that not much had changed on this place for a long time. If the dance of joy the facility did every time he went home was any indication it had been a very long time since the Ancients had been here.

He had found a few things he could use in the course of his explorations. A chunk of driftwood, light but surprisingly tough, had made a perfect chair. A large bowl-shaped piece of rock he had turned into a sort of fireplace, after he had convinced the facility that he _wanted_ the fire to burn without fire suppressant foam, thank you. He was disappointed, but not surprised that there was no sign of any recent occupancy, at least beyond the odd shaped footprints that seemed to be everywhere around the cove. He was pretty sure that whatever had made them was not something that he wanted to run into. It looked almost like a bird track, but was thicker. The thing they most resembled was the dinosaur tracks he had seen preserved in the stones of Colorado. These weren't as big as that, being only slightly bigger than his hand, but the dinosaur tracks had been from velocoraptors, and he just wasn't up to living the Jurassic Park thing.

On the other side of the indigenous species, he had found a squirrel-like thing that was about the size of a small cat, and quite a bit dumber. He had found out that the creatures were attracted to his light at night, and would come in close looking for food. All he had had to do was set up some snares, and he had a nearly endless supply of the creatures. Not that he was all that thrilled with the diet, they were on the gamey side, but food was food, and he only had so many MRE. He had also found some roots, he was pretty sure it was what the squirrel things fed on usually. The fishing had turned out to be as good as he had thought, and he easily caught breakfast, lunch, or dinner on his improvised pole with the fishing line and hook that had been in the supplies. He had started making a net out of some of the vines that decorated the cliff near his house.

They had proven to be tough and fibrous, and after a few weeks of nighttime knot tying he was well on his way to having a good size throwing net. He was watching the cove, and had noted that schools of fish, evidently long unused to the presence of a predator of his type here had a tendency to gather in schools in the shallow waters. He would be able to get a pretty good haul in once he had the net ready. Preservation would be easy enough. He built some wooden racks under which he would build fires. The meat would be smoked, and he could store it in one of the spare rooms, one that he had convinced the facility to lower the temperature on. It wasn't a refrigerator, but it would keep the smoked food for a long time. He had tried it out already on some of the squirrel creatures. The squirrel jerky wasn't too bad if he didn't think about it much. He was putting up stock for…well whatever would come. He still wasn't sure what season he was in. If this was spring he was pretty much set, but if it was autumn he was probably going to have a bit of a hungry winter.

Further exploration around the small village had not yielded any other discoveries. He had not really expected it to. This was not a rich land, despite the covering conifers, and had not been anytime in the last several thousand years. It would not have supported a large population. He had no answers about why the Ancients had put the stargate here, and he suspected that short of some ascended Ancient dropping by with some info, he never would. He had decided that he was not going to focus on the past, neither the distant past nor the recent one. He couldn't do that and survive, at least not sane. He had some serious doubts about just how that was going to work out in the end. He had never been this alone. Even in the cloister there had been the others, as strange and focused on ascension as they had been. He imagined that this was much what it would have been like there if his team hadn't gotten him out after the others had ascended. But here…other than the signs of former habitants, there was no one but him.

The despair of that thought was what drove him to keep searching, to keep looking for anything that might be out there. So far he had searched the entire island from one end to the other, finding nothing else that offered any hope of any other inhabitants beyond the squirrel-things. There were some birds, a pretty large variety as a matter of fact, and he had snared some of them as well. Predictably they had tasted like chicken. Once the exploration had reached an end he turned his attention to making things as good as he could survival wise. He had found that all those hours spent reading as a child had paid off big time. Take that Daddy-dearest. He had loved the stories of true adventure, of man struggling against nature and winning. He had picked up a surprising amount of offbeat information from those stories, including how to tan skins using…well lets just say that you used what acidic liquids were readily available. It had been a smelly process, but his squirrel moccasins were surprisingly comfortable, and he was able to save his boots for…well, for whatever might come. He had started saving up skins for more clothes, figuring that his clothing would only last so long especially since his current method of cleaning them involved a rough rock and some bar soap. It got the stuff clean, but it was hard on the material.

He had also found yet another new hobby. At first he had been mainly concerned with staying alive, finding food, fixing his shelter, getting the lay of the land, etc. But slowly he had done everything he could do to make life bearable, if not good. But that meant that he had very little to keep his mind busy. He was busy enough in the mornings with his PT and tending his snares, and in the evening with his net making, but the day stretched long, and he had to find something to keep himself from going completely bonkers. He had found his solution in one morning's foraging.

He had found an outcropping of slate. The layered rock was exposed in huge flat sheets of near perfect squares. He had broken one off and had a piece of natural chalkboard almost three feet tall by five feet long. He had also found some chalk, a bed of it, near sea level in the cove. He had been forced to dry it out some, but once it was done he was set. It had come to him a few days earlier, how to keep himself busy during the long lonely days. He hauled the slate back to his home and set them up against one wall. Later that day he had started.

One of the seven Millennium Math Problems was an explanation of the Navier-Stokes equations of the 19th century. Even having been around so long, there was little understanding of the implications of the formula, especially in the field of interest of the Millennium problem. It was believed that the equations could explain and predict the activity of breezes and turbulence in both water and air. As a pilot and a surfer, he was a student of the vagrancies of the two most important liquids, and it seemed fitting that he should turn his attention to working on the mathematical solution. His plan was simple; he would work the problem in stages. As he completed a stage he would transfer the completed section to the interior walls of his new house, call it an interior design project, and use the chalkboard for current work where changes had to be made. It wasn't going to be easy. Some of the greatest scientists on Earth, and possibly elsewhere, had tried to quantify turbulence and failed. The Navier-Stokes equations were a stepping-stone, and he wasn't sure if his math skill was up to the test. Not that anyone would ever know if he failed. He preferred not to think about that eventuality. Hell, if he solved it and he ever got off this rock he could claim the 1 million dollar prize. It seemed almost as likely as him being able to grow a new control crystal using only his mind.

And so he had been passing his days, keeping himself in shape and finding food in the mornings and sinking into the mathematics in the afternoons. He used the evenings for net creation, and once he was done with that, whittling. He had also started to catalog the constellations, naming a few here and there as the mood struck him to fill the early night hours, and then it was off to bed. He was becoming quite the homebody. He didn't see that changing anytime soon. One thing he didn't do was think about his friends, or Atlantis. It hurt too much, like picking at a scab that wasn't ready to be removed. Maybe someday he would be able to think about them without the pain.

He had, for the first week or so, thought that maybe it would all blow over soon and they would come for him. The herb would lose it potency, or the people would build up an immunity, or something, but as the days had gone by he had come to the conclusion that fate had made its decision. This was Sheppard's fate, and nothing was going to ruin it. He did spare a brief thought as to what exactly was going to happen when the Daedalus showed up, but he figured that unless Caldwell stood off and beamed everyone up to the ship and detoxed them that there was little chance of any rescue there, even after the two months wait. If he knew Caldwell, his first step would be to call down to see what was going on. If they didn't answer and the shield was up that would be the end of it. Atlantis could just wait him out.

If the shield was down, they would beam in some Marines, maybe even Caldwell himself, and they would instantly fall under Lucius' charm. Sheppard had little hope that there would be anyone immune to the man like he was. Who knew what would happen then. Caldwell might be suspicious, or he might buy into the 'benevolent healer' shtick and send more people. Once the Colonel was taken, that would be it for the ship. Then Lucius would have a nuclear-armed ship that could take him anywhere he wanted to go, including Earth. Sheppard was almost glad he was here when he considered _that_ scenario. The idea of Lucius loose on Earth was just overwhelming. He suspected however that it wouldn't come to that. He supposed that the shield would be up, and once Caldwell determined that there was no response, he would return to Earth, or at least the halfway point where radio contact was possible, for instructions. Sheppard was afraid that those instructions might include destroying Atlantis.

He had shuffled those thoughts off along with his abandonment issues, and had immersed himself in his day to day living. The less he thought, outside of keeping alive and working his math, the better. He should be happy he reminded himself. Here he had no responsibilities. He didn't have to worry about keeping anyone alive but himself, and if he ever grew tired of that, he could end it at his own choosing, an option that he had not had before, at least not without a guilty conscious. He wasn't suicidal, he was not that far gone, but the option was there. He wondered sometimes, late at night as he lay in his sleeping bag how long he would be able to stand it, the complete isolation. Would the day come when the option of simply ceasing to survive would be appealing? He hoped that he would not find out.

He was halfway through the second month when he could no longer ignore that the season appeared to be changing. The days were growing shorter, cooler, and the nights were getting colder and much longer. He didn't mind the cooler days, but that definitely meant that he would have to make provisions for winter. He looked over his clothes that he had brought. He had a set of long johns, a coat, and some gloves. That was the extent of his cold-weather gear. It would not be enough. He turned his nighttime attentions to making some more leather and creating a nice squirrel-thing coat. He had never been one to wear fur, but it looked like that he would have little choice. He expected that snow was not going to be out of the question.

A week later he was becoming deeply concerned about the ever-shortening daylight hours. This was not the usual shorting days toward the solstice thing. In fact he had a very bad feeling about it as almost everyday he lost more and more daylight. He was pretty sure by the second week of his third month that he was somewhere in the far north or far south latitude of this planet. He was heading for something that he wasn't sure he was ready for…six months of night, and it was probably going to be a cold one. He stepped up his efforts to build up his food supplies. He dug what roots he could find to add to his supplies. He was capturing and smoking squirrel-things by the dozens- where were all the little beasts coming from- and he had a pretty good supply of fish jerky. Along with the roots and dried seaweed he should be able to get through the winter without getting a case of scurvy or rickets. He wished for some fruit, but the island had not yielded any fruit trees. There were some berries however, and he had dried as many as he could wrestle from the birds. It was during one of the berry picking excursions that he had learned what the top predator on the island was. It wasn't him. and it hadn't been a pleasant meeting.

He was picking some berries from a bush on the side of one of the cliffs. He was leaving the ones on the branches hanging over the hundred-foot drop to the birds when he spotted a group of what he was calling sea lions playing in the waters below. He had not been able to see one close up, as they did not come into the cove, but instead seemed to stay in the area near the rocks of the south island. They were larger than Earth sea lions, more like a walrus, but without the tusks. Probably weighed in around 500 lbs or so in the adults. They usually cavorted in the water or sunned themselves on the rocks. Sheppard had briefly considered trying to catch one, but then thought about what it would be like to wrestle with five hundred pounds of wounded mammal if anything went wrong. It wasn't as if he could go down to the local medical clinic.

He watched them playing in the waves a bit then went back to his berry picking. He had just turned to reach for some when he caught movement in his peripheral vision. He spun, and ducked at the same time as his mind was screaming at him that whatever it was, was about to hit him. As it turned out, what it was would not have hit him. With his pilots eye he realized later that it would have passed over him by about two feet, not that it was a comforting thought on reflection. It was by sheer luck that he just happened to land on his stomach in such a way that he saw what happened next.

A huge black form dove down on the frolicking sea lions. Sheppard estimated that it must have been moving at near 200 mph, like a peregrine falcon in its stoop. Before he could make out any detail the form hit the water where one of the seal lions had been moments before. Water geysered up and a second later, huge wings easily 25 feet from wing tip to wing tip, unfurled across the water and gave a few mighty flaps. In less than a moment the creature, the bird, was flying again. In one huge talon was clutched one of the sea lions. Sheppard watched in amazement as it flew off toward the mainland with its lunch. After it had disappeared he managed to shut his mouth and climb to his feet. Holy crap!

He had seen birds riding the thermals above the mainland, but he had assumed that they were small creatures, maybe something like a vulture or buzzard. It seemed that they had been a bit bigger than that, and that there must be some hellacious thermals over there. It made him almost long for a glider then he remembered the company he would be keeping. Maybe he would reconsider that idea. It seemed that he was not the top of the food chain here. He would just about make an appetizer to one of those things. What was it with this galaxy and things that might eat him?

He had been thinking about trying to get to the mainland somehow, a raft, a glider, something, but now he wasn't so sure that was a good idea. If that was what the birds were like, he really didn't want to know what else was there. He also wasn't really keen on the idea of being out there on the water on what amounted to a platter for any passing mega falcon. Resigned for the foreseeable future to staying on the island he had gone back to his gathering keeping a wary eye to the sky.

It was a week after that that he found out he was not alone…

Chapter 5-

Okay, he was not going to yell. He was _not_ going to yell. Lucius had pointed out to him that yelling did not get things done faster or better. Well Lucius could just take a flying…Rodney pulled himself up as the thought went through his head. Where had that come from? Yes, he was frustrated, as was just about every other person on Atlantis. But that was no reason to blame Lucius; even though it was his fault…okay there it was again. What were these thoughts that kept coming up? Was he channeling Sheppard?

McKay stopped his hurried walk down the corridor and slumped against the wall. Maybe it was the result of too long living in the cold, working in the heat, and not having enough to eat. It had been three months now since things had gone to hell, and they were no closer to finding a solution to the problem. The Daedalus had come a month ago, but they had kept the shield up and they had gone away after Caldwell had done everything short of dropping a nuke on top of them. He figured that they had gone back to the midway point to consult with the SGC, and would be showing up again sooner or later.

Thanks to the planning that Elizabeth had done there were supplies, though not so much that there wasn't a need for rationing. McKay had pointed out that he needed increased rations due to his hypoglycemia, but had gained little. He was pretty sure that the only person who was getting plenty to eat was Lucius. It seemed that people were anxious to give part of their food to Lucius when he whined, and yes, Rodney was willing to admit that it was definitely whining, about being hungry. McKay had noticed that all of Lucius' wives, including his two prospective brides Elizabeth and Teyla were all looking noticeably thinner while Lucius seemed to be gaining weight. He had found himself glad that the weddings had been put off pending a solution to Atlantis' ongoing problems.

On top of all the mechanical issues, the stubbornly inoperative gate being at the top of the list, McKay had found an additional issue. One he was not prepared to speak to anyone about. He was lonely. Elizabeth and Teyla were fluttering around doing 'girly' things like wedding planning or…and he shuddered to think about this…cooking for Lucius. Ronan had appointed himself as Lucius' bodyguard, and never left his side, giving everyone a wary look if they dared to approach. Beckett was in the labs, working on the 'miracle drugs' that Lucius had given him. The doctor's enthusiasm for the formulas had waned slightly over the last month or so, as the expected results had not shown themselves in the lab. Lucius had waved it aside saying that the labs were just unable to duplicate actual results, and Beckett had agreed at first, but McKay thought he was starting to see a bit of desperation in the Scot's dedication to the labs.

With all his friends occupied, even with all the things he had going on himself, he had found himself at loose ends when he did stop. He ate alone, went out on the balconies alone, and watched the occasional movie alone. He often found himself with a snarky comment about something or other and would turn to share it with the presence that he expected at his side, only to find that space empty. It had taken him almost a week to realize that the person he expected to be there was John Sheppard.

As he leaned against the wall, ignoring the people passing by who cast him odd looks, he thought again about why he had agreed when Lucius had suggested that Sheppard would be better off somewhere else. About why he had let the man be forced through the gate to a planet with a malfunctioning DHD, about why it hadn't bothered him before that he had let someone talk him into exiling his…best friend.

McKay slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his legs splayed out into the corridor, forcing people to step around or over him. He continued to ignore them as the events of the last three months played back through his mind as if he were watching someone else doing them. Apart from the whole thing with Sheppard, he had completely let his work here go to hell. All of the projects he had waiting for him had gone by the wayside as he had first turned his attention to that silly hydroponics lab, and then as he had been forced to spend his time fixing Atlantis. As he sat there, he recalled everything that had happened on Lucius' planet, how they had been so puzzled about how everyone seemed enthralled with the man. He remembered speculating about the effects of pheromones, and the herbs that seemed so important to Lucius, even to the point of sending Ronan and Teyla to that Wraith infested planet…what the hell had they all been thinking?

They hadn't been, that was the problem. He realized that they all, that he, had been affected by the pheromones. The fact that he had known what was going on, and still had allowed himself to be drawn in just showed how insidious the stuff was. Look what they had allowed to happen here. Sheppard gone, the city falling apart, the SGC pissed off and probably planning on how to nuke them, who knew what the Wraith had been up to in the last three months, they could be getting ready for another siege and they would not have a clue. Hell, the Genii could be on the mainland building boats to attack them again, and they had been worried about freakin' herbs!

He was shaken from his horrified realization by a booted toe being jabbed into his leg. He looked up to find one of the Marines staring down at him.

"You okay Dr. McKay?" the Marine asked. McKay scowled up at him and struggled to his feet.

"Yes, yes. Just taking a well-deserved rest. Very busy and important man here you know. I have to take what moments I can before the next crisis that can only be handled by someone of my genius. Thank you for interrupting that." He snarled. The Marine only blinked at him and moved on. McKay dithered for a moment before he started on down the corridor. He needed to think. He found himself wondering down the corridor in the personnel quarters area. He stopped in front of Sheppard's door. Lucius had suggested that since the room wasn't being used that it made sense for him to move in, but they had found that the door had been locked. McKay had taken a look at it, but despite removing the crystals and trying every trick he had learned in two years of dealing with Ancient technology, he had been able to get it open. He had meant to try again, but other things had come up, like…everything. Lorne had said that Sheppard had intentionally locked his door when he was being escorted to the gate. It was so Sheppard, a thumbing of his nose to those who he must have seen as betraying him. One of whom was him, Dr Rodney McKay, multiple PhD, SOB, who had been so 'busy' with his little power rerouting that he hadn't even bothered to go see his best friend off to his exile. He wasn't good at empathy, but he was pretty sure what his absence must have meant to Sheppard. He stepped forward and leaned his head against the door.

"I'm sorry…John…I'm so damn sorry." He whispered. He laid his hand against the door, and almost fell through the doorway as the door opened abruptly. He stepped forward to catch his balance, and found himself inside the room with the door closing behind him. He stood there for a moment astounded then realized two things. One, the lights had come on when he entered the room. Not grudgingly and at half strength like everywhere else on Atlantis, but instantly and at full strength. Second, the room was pleasantly warm. Not meltingly hot, not freezing cold, just pleasantly warm. He shucked off his outer layers, and shuffled over to sit on the neatly made bed.

Looking around the room it was if Sheppard had left only moments ago. His golf clubs were still in the corner; his skateboard leaned nearby. The surfboard that had appeared mysteriously after one of the Daedalus' runs was still on the wall. It seemed that Sheppard had not expected his exile to be 'fun in the sun'. There wasn't so much as a speck of dust on any of it. The closet was open, and McKay could see that there was only one thing left hanging in it. He rose and walked over and saw that it was Sheppard's dress blues. No need for fancy dress either it seemed. Curiosity satisfied he returned to the bed and sat back down.

He didn't know why he had suddenly become immune. But then it might not have been all that sudden. Now that he was thinking clearly he could recall several times in the last few weeks when his thoughts had been anti-Lucius, he had just pushed them aside until today. He wasn't a medical voodoo doctor. He had a bare understanding of the effects of pheromones. He wasn't sure if there was a saturation level or if he had built up immunity or if he had done something in the last few weeks that had counteracted the affect. He needed someone who understood all this stuff. He needed Carson.

Sheppard had tried, but the pull of the herb had been too strong. He had been trying to isolate Beckett from the source, Lucius; he just hadn't counted on Ronan the bloodhound coming after them so soon. If Beckett had been away much longer would he have been free of the effect? And why was Sheppard immune, was it just the cold, or was there something else? Damn, he needed Beckett. The problem was he had no way of isolating him. The puddlejumpers had gone on strike along with the rest of Atlantis, and he doubted that while the city had let him into Sheppard's room that it was going to back down on its siege to allow him out to the mainland. That wouldn't have worked anyway; he was no Sheppard to survive in the wilderness for however long it took. He needed another plan. He dropped his chin into his hand.

Five minutes later his head flew up and a smile grew across his face. Well if he couldn't go to the isolation, then the isolation would have to come to him. He went to his pile of clothes and started pulling them back on. Once he was ready he started for the door. Before it opened he turned and looked around the room. When he spoke he wasn't sure if it was to Atlantis, Sheppard, or himself.

"We're going to get him back." It was a simple statement of fact, and he intended it to come true.

Chapter 6-

He had been right about the 6 months of night thing it appeared. On the first day of the forth month of his exile the sun set, and did not rise the next day. The days had shortened swiftly, and now he had only the moon and the stars to light his way on his daily run. The darkness was not absolute, just as it had not been at Antarctica. It was sort of an ever-present twilight. He had noted that the squirrel-thing population had gone from rampant numbers to nothing almost as soon as the sun had set. Good thing he had put up plenty of jerky. The warm sea current had continued however. Whatever gyre drove the currents in the sea was evidently still operating. The local weather however had not been so kind. A week after the sun had set the first snow fell, leaving a carpet of white over everything. Sheppard had tried out his new squirrel-thing full-length coat/cloak. It wasn't pretty, but it was warm. He wasn't looking forward to the next six months. If he had been bored before, now he was practically stupefied. Only his math problem kept him from going completely nutso. That and trying to figure out what the hell was leaving tracks around the facility.

He had never seen whatever it was that had left those bird-like tracks he had seen. At first he had assumed whatever it was had simply been an actual bird after all, maybe a flock had stopped here during a migration. Then he had seen more of them on the beach of the cove. They went in and out of the water. In the sands of the beach he could see the depth of the marks, from that he could estimate the weight of the creature that had made them. As far as he could tell it had to be around a hundred pounds, and the stride suggested that it was about as half as tall as he was. Given the size of the prints it was unlikely that it was a flying bird. The weight to size ratio was wrong. He guessed it could be some sort of flightless bird like an ostrich or emu, but the track still didn't look right. As the days got shorter he noted that the prints started appearing on the path leading up onto the island, at first only on the lower part, then higher up. On the morning of the snowfall he found tracks in the snow outside the door of the facility. They had gone no further up the path and had returned to the sea. He found out what made them the next day.

He was trudging through the snow, now at six inches, headed back from the north end of the island when he heard a scream that made every hair on his body stand on end. It was like a combination of the scream of a hunting cat and a foghorn. It didn't take him long to locate where the noise was coming from as he saw one of the huge birds he had watched take the sea-lion weeks before on the ground trying to poke its beak into a deadfall of trees. It seemed to be trying to reach something that was hiding in the tangle of dead branches and leaves. As he watched the bird lifted a huge talon and ripped at the pile, pulling off huge amounts of wood with each pass. As the echo of the ungodly screech faded, he could hear something else screaming. It was a higher in tone than the other scream, and was filled with terror where the other had been filled with hunger and anger. He knew that this was nature's way, the strong preyed on the weak, but he could not ignore the terror in that scream, could not just walk away and let the big bird feed on whatever animal it had cornered. He just wasn't made that way.

He was behind the great bird, and it had not seen him in its concentration on whatever it had cornered under the branches. He took his M16 off his shoulder where it had been hanging by its strap and moving as quietly as possible got into a position where he was sheltered under the branches of a fir tree, but still had a clear shot at Rodan. Given the strength of those talons he doubted they would be much use if it turned on him, but he hoped he could take it out before it got the chance. He had a feeling that scaring it off was not going to be an option. Taking aim he fired off three quick shots into the bird's head. He knew that at least two of them hit before the creature spun on him, screeching in pain and anger. He had a moment when he was sure he was going to bird food then he was firing again, aiming at the huge yellow and black eyes. Four more shots later he was standing over the unmoving body. Looked like he was going to be eating leftovers for a while. He hoped it tasted like turkey.

Leaving the bird where it lay he went toward the deadfall. He had his rifle up. Your basic wild animal had ways of not appreciating last minute saves. He didn't need to be bitten by some terrified squirrel-thing or whatever was in there. He would make sure that it wasn't bleeding to death or something, and then he would leave it alone to make its get away while he hauled birdzilla back to his house. He wondered briefly what he could make with all the feathers. It wasn't as if he needed a duster. He might consider some for fletching arrows; his ammunition wouldn't last forever.

He was at the edge of the deadfall now, peering into the darkness beneath the limbs. The 'day' was one of the brighter ones since there was no cloud cover, but he could not make out what was inside. He thought he saw some movement, and he caught what he thought was the end of a whimper of pain. He wasn't going to stick his head in there. Even a small animal could cause damage if terrified and in pain, and the bird probably wouldn't have been after something that was too small, it wouldn't have been worth the effort. Of course if it were hungry even a squirrel-thing would have made a snack. He decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and backed away from the deadfall. He hoped whatever it was could make its way back to its den after it realized that it was all clear. It was the best he could do.

He went back toward the bird, trying to figure out the best way to haul around a deadweight that weighed as much as he did. He finally decided to just drag it in the snow. The feathers would protect it for the most part, and the snow would make it somewhat easier. He tied the two feet together with a length of the braided vine that he had carried with him, and started to drag it toward his house. He had only gone a few feet when he heard something new from the deadfall. Whatever was in there was…crying.

It wasn't an animal whimper of pain, it wasn't whining, it was crying. As in sobbing your heart out, 'I want my momma' crying. He had never heard an animal make that kind of sound. That particular expression of pain seemed reserved for humans or a few of the upper level primates. He had seen no evidence of any sort of primate here, and definitely no humans. Could someone have come through the gate and fallen prey to a passing hungry bird when they found they could not get back through? He had been by the gate yesterday and there had been no tracks in the snow around it to indicate that he had any visitors. He supposed the person could have come through this morning. It wasn't as if there was a closing time on the intergalactic thrill ride. He dropped the bird's feet and walked toward the deadfall again warily. It could be some sort of trap.

"Hey!" he called into the darkness. He was surprised at the sound of his own voice, and realized how odd it was to be speaking out loud to something beside himself. His inner dialog had gone on unchanged, but he hadn't realized how long it had been since he had spoken. He cleared his throat and tried again.

"My name is Sheppard, John Sheppard. I don't mean you any harm. The uh…bird thing is dead, it's okay for you to come out. If you're hurt I can help you out. I have a shelter, and some food." There was no answer, just the sobbing. He looked nervously around. It was growing colder, and the sky had started to cloud over even in the short time he had been here. He suspected another storm was coming in, and he really did not want to be out in it. It would take him nearly an hour to get home dragging the bird as it was. He licked his lips, and unlimbered his rifle again. He stepped further into the deadfall.

"I'm uh….I'm gonna come in there now, and see if I can help you. I want you to know that I am armed, but I promise not to use it except to defend myself…" still no answer. The sobs seemed to be fading however. He flipped on the small flashlight on top of the M16. Another two steps had him at the opening, and he ducked down and went in, feeling the branches grabbing at his squirrel-thing coat. There seemed to be a small cave-like hole here, about five feet wide by six or seven deep, and about five feet high. Something moved to his right, and he swung the light around, and froze as he saw what was there. The creature he had illuminated did the same, then the large, slightly bulbous golden eyes with vertical pupils seemed to roll up and it slumped to the ground without a sound.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there staring at the…well he wasn't sure what it was. It had been about three-quarters of his height, maybe less, able to stand all the way up inside the cave. It appeared to be bipedal, with the requisite two arms, two eyes etc, but from there it kinda diverged from the 'human' thing. He moved hesitantly closer, and played his light over the unmoving form. The…being was curled on its side, and he could see it pretty clearly. It…he..she..okay let's stick with 'it' for now, was green with brownish speckles on its skin which appeared to be something like that on a frog or salamander. The head was larger than a human's for the size of the body. There was no hair that he could see, though there appeared to be a flap of skin that ran back from just above its forehead and disappeared back over the skull. There was no nose on the face, only two nostrils above a wider than human mouth with thin lips. All in all it gave him the impression of a frog. He shown his light down the body, and noted that the arms ended in three fingered hands. He ran the light down the legs and realized that he had found what had been leaving those tracks, long three-toed feet with a small claw on each toe.

As he finished looking he realized that the form seemed to be vibrating slightly. It took him a moment to realize that it was shivering. Between his coat and the adrenaline he hadn't really noticed just how cold it had gotten. Well hell; what did he do now? The being didn't seem to be waking up. He wasn't sure if it had passed out from fear, or if it was injured. He shown the light over it again, looking for any sign of a wound. While he didn't see anything on the top, he noted that there was a pool of dark red forming underneath it on the frozen ground. He looked around, and found a place to wedge his rifle so that he could use both of his hands yet still have light.

Touching the arm of the form, the feeling of the skin reinforced his impression of frog skin. It was also very cold. He rolled the being onto its back, and could see the source of the blood almost immediately. On the right flank was a gaping wound that he suspected was from the talon of the bird. It had evidently got in a blow before the being could take cover. He grimaced at the amount of blood that was seeping from the wound. At least the cold would be slowing that down for now. He reached into the pockets he had sewn into the inside of his coat and pulled out some field dressings. He was grateful they had been included in his supplies. He quickly secured the largest of them around the wound, and when he found a smaller wound on the right arm he used the second to cover that.

Once he had that done he turned his attention to what was next. Whatever this being was, it seemed no more immune to the cold than he, though it did not appear to be wearing any type of clothing. Maybe it needed to be moving around to generate heat. If it was like a frog he was surprised it was moving around at all in this weather, he had thought that they hibernated or something, but the mysteries of amphibian biology were beyond him. He needed to get the thing-he really needed a name for it-back to his house. If he moved quickly he could be back there in thirty minutes. The being did not look heavy, and wouldn't slow him down like the bird would have. He could just leave the bird here and come back for it. The snow would preserve the meat, and even if some predator, like another of the huge birds, took it he would still have enough to eat.

Reaching a decision he peeled off his coat, gasping as the cold air rushed in on him. He was wearing his mission jacket, but it wasn't made for these temperatures. He wrapped the coat around the shivering being, careful of the wounded side and arm. Once he had it bundled up he retrieved his rifle and slung it back over his shoulder. He then bent and picked it up. It was surprisingly light for its size, making the job of maneuvering out of the dead fall easier. Once he was out he settled it more comfortably in his arms and started toward home.

A half hour later he thought the door open to the facility and laid the wrapped bundle on his bed. He sent a thought to the computer asking for more heat, and he felt the warm air rushing around him as the anxious to please facility complied enthusiastically. In just a few minutes he was warming up, and he thought it would be okay to unwrap his visitor. He undid the coat and pulled it from under the still form. In the bright lights of the facility it looked even more frog-like, and he had a sudden flash of guilt at all of the tadpoles he had consigned to a hasty death as a child collecting them from ponds and taking them home to die in his fish tank, or to be flushed by his father if they were found.

He shook off that thought and went to get his first aid kit. It was limited, just a field kit from a jumper it looked like, but it was better than nothing. It wasn't as if Beckett was going to be dropping in anytime soon, so it would have to do. He had tried not to think about what was going to happen if, or given his luck, when, he had hurt himself, and this use of his precious supplies was probably not wise, but then when was anything he did on the spur of the moment? He sorted out what he thought he was going to need and put some water on his little stove to heat. When it was warm he brought it over to the bed and unwrapped the field dressings. He took care of the arm first just because it hadn't appeared deep, and it was easy to clean and rewrap. He then turned his attention to the larger wound. It was seeping blood slowly still, not a particularly good sign. He wasn't sure about the differences in human versus amphibian anatomy, but he assumed that blood loss was a problem. He cleaned the wound, concerned when the creature didn't move even when he knew it should have hurt. Once it was cleaned he sprinkled in some of the powder that was supposed to inhibit bleeding. He then bound it with some clean dressings. Once he was finished he pulled the squirrel-thing blanket he had made up over the creature and sat back on his heels.

He stared at the being in his bed. Well, it seemed this planet wasn't as uninhabited as everyone, or at least he and Lucius had assumed. Evidently these 'people' didn't worry about the gate not being active from their end. Maybe they couldn't leave this place, and it wasn't an issue. He wondered what they thought of his moving in. He suddenly felt like an interloper. Of course they hadn't been using the facility and he certainly hadn't seen any evidence that they hunted here, what with the squirrel-thing population being what it was, so he hadn't been trespassing that way. Though they might not see it that way.

Obviously they had not wanted him to know they were there, or they would have revealed themselves to him voluntarily. He thought back to the large eyes that he had seen just before the creature had passed out. Many amphibians were nocturnal. Could this race be the same? That could explain why he hadn't seen anyone until now. They had only come out at night, and he had pretty much stayed in for the most part. He had done some star gazing on the beach, but usually he was in by planet midnight. That left a lot of time for them to come out. He guessed they must have been curious however, thus the footprints around his house. He recalled the footprints near the ruined village. Obviously they did get around the island, but the question was why, and could they all get along?

If they were indeed nocturnal, then their time was definitely now, what with the half year of night thing. He would be at the disadvantage. He could stay in the facility if he had too, but the very idea of 6 planet months inside this little Ancient box was almost too much to bear. He needed to make contact with whoever was in charge and see about making nice. He hoped that he could remember all the things he had learned from Teyla about first contact. With being alone so much he was afraid his social skills had suffered, and he might not be at his best. He tried to think of what benefit he could offer the…well what was he going to call them; he couldn't go on calling them the creatures, that tended to piss people off. He pondered for a moment then smiled. Yes, that would be perfect. He raised a hand in a pontifical manner over the unconscious form.

"I dub thee Gungan. I hope you appreciate it." He frowned as another thought hit. Did that mean he had to rename the planet to Naboo? He hated that. He shrugged and rose to go and get some water in a cup so that when the…Gungan…woke up there would be some at hand. He was setting it down on the floor next to the air mattress when he looked up and found himself staring into a pair of huge golden eyes.

The eyes almost immediately squinted, and he realized that the lights were probably quite a bit brighter than was comfortable for the Gungan. He sent a thought to the facility and the lights dimmed. The squint went away, and Sheppard found himself being closely examined. The creature did not appear to be afraid, but then it might just be in shock and not be reacting normally. Of course he preferred curiosity to panic, so he wasn't complaining. He stopped where he was, and raised his hands, palms out, hoping that the Gungan would see it for what it was, a gesture of peaceable intentions. The Gungan seemed to take it as such as it took the opportunity to look around the room. The golden eyes grew large as they swept over the smooth walls, now marked with his formulas, and came to rest on the huge window. It blinked slowly at that and then turned its eyes back to him. Since he had its attention he decided to see if he could communicate. He pointed to his chest.

"Sheppard." He said, repeating it twice more. The Gungan seemed unimpressed and lifted the blanket to look at his wounds. He crouched down so he was more on its level. Didn't need to be towering over it, he would seem less threatening down here. He remained ready to leap away however should the Gungan prove to be violently opposed to non-amphibians. His eyes fell on the cup of water, and he seized on the opportunity to make a nice gesture. He picked up the cup and offered it. "Thought you might like some water when you woke up. Nothing like a lot of bleeding to make you thirsty." The Gungan shifted his gaze from Sheppard to the cup and back, but seemed to finally grasp what he was offering. It reached out and took the cup. After a cautious sip it drank the entire cup and held it out to Sheppard. He took it and went into the small bathroom and refilled it. The Gungan had stretched its neck to follow his progress and its eyes had grown wide again as he filled the cup. This time it took it almost reverently when he offered it. It looked around the room again, its eyes going over the formula. Sheppard suddenly felt a little silly about writing the formula up on the walls. It was like having graffiti on your living room wall when you invited people over for tea. Not the interior design of a sane mind perhaps.

The Gungan looked back at him and set the cup on the floor. It shifted slightly and grimaced as the wound no doubt made itself known. Sheppard was glad when it did not try to get up. He would have had to protest, and he didn't want to appear to be keeping it here against its will, but it shouldn't be moving around much until the bleeding had stopped for a while. Since there didn't seem to be anything else for him to do he lowered himself the rest of the way to the floor and sat there trying not to stare at his guest. Well this was awkward.

They stayed that way for several minutes, simply staring at each other until Sheppard couldn't stand it anymore. He got to his feet and started toward his pantry. He wasn't sure what the Gungan might eat, but he had a bit of a variety, so he figured he would offer a bit of everything and let it pick its own. He didn't have two plates, so he put a little of everything on his one plate, and then picked up a few pieces of squirrel-thing jerky for himself. Once back in the main room he found that the Gungan had shifted so that it was leaning against the wall at the head of the bed. It seemed to be in some pain, but ignoring it. Sheppard could relate to that. He handed it the plate.

It looked from the plate to Sheppard and back at the plate in much the same way as it had with the cup. It almost seemed as if it were shocked that he was offering it anything. He wasn't sure if it was because it was wrong, from its point of view, or if it simply hadn't expected it. Either way, he figured it couldn't be a bad thing to offer food and drink. Teyla had always said that it was a surefire icebreaker. He frowned as he thought of his teammate again. He had tried not to think about what might be going on back on Atlantis with Elizabeth and Teyla and any other female personnel that might catch Lucius' eye. It basically made his blood boil. What the man was doing was the equivalent of date rate. If he ever made it back…but that was a thought for another day. He gave the Gungan a wan smile and took out one of the jerky pieces and took a bite. The creature nudged aside the jerky on the plate, but seemed to eat the seaweed and dried fish with relish. They ate in silence. When they were done, and he had fetched the creature yet another cup of water, they were back to the staring thing. Sheppard decided to try again.

"John Sheppard" He said pointing to his chest. The creature considered him for a moment longer then pointed at its own chest with its three-fingered hand. It made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a croak that sounded something like someone clearing their throat. Okay, here was a problem. Evidently the universal translator in the gate was not going to help out here. He suspected that the vocal cords on the amphibian were significantly different than his own, perhaps being made to create sounds underwater and not in air. In any event, it was clear that they did not share a common language. He could see that the creature seemed to have reached the same understanding, as it was looking slightly downcast. Or maybe it was just hurting from the wound. He wasn't even sure if he could ascribe the same feelings to it that he had.

He looked around the room, at something of a loss. Most of the movies all showed the hero making contact with the alien race and coming to an instant understanding using three hand gestures and some common word that they both held to be the cornerstone of their lives, something like honor, duty, truth, etc. In the ones where the hero didn't communicate with the aliens he usually ended up kicking their asses after destroying a large amount of real estate and losing most, if not all, of his expedition. Sheppard was beginning to suspect that the movies might be less than realistic. He needed something in between. His eyes fell on his makeshift chalkboard.

He had moved the latest part of his formula onto the wall the evening before, having completed the newest section right before. He had cleaned off the board in expectation of starting the next phase, and so it was sitting there all clean and ready. He got up and dragged it over so that it was nearer the bed, using his improvised chair as a prop. He got his chunk of chalk and after a few moments of thought drew a picture of the stargate and then a stick figure standing in front of it. He pointed to the stick figure and then to himself. The Gungan nodded. It understood the pictures evidently. Finally, something was working.

He drew a series of pictures showing the island, the land bridge, the mainland, the facility, hunting, fishing, the ruins, and finally the large bird attacking another stick figure. The Gungan nodded through it all, making some more of the hiss/croak noises that could have been anything from laughter about his bad drawing to an exposition on any one of his methods of staying alive. He ended by drawing himself at the gate again, but he put an x through the DHD and the gate, hoping to show that he wanted to go but couldn't. Finished, he held out his hands in a shrug, hoping that the gesture translated better than anything else he had tried. The creature nodded and reached a hand out. Sheppard wasn't sure what it wanted at first, but then he realized that it wanted the chalk. He handed it over and dragged the chalkboard over. He wiped off his own drawings and then held it as the creature started to draw a series of small pictures.

He tried not to be jealous that even with three fingers it seemed to be better at drawing than he was. He watched as what was obviously the island was drawn, then the stargate and a series of figures coming out of it. The figures were drawn with robes and over each of them a symbol was drawn, an Ancient symbol, the symbol for Atlantis. His eyes must have given his recognition of the symbol away, as the creature made another string of sounds. It continued to draw, drawing in the facility and an intact land bridge. It drew a boxy shape moving from the island to the mainland-a jumper, it had to be. It drew more buildings on the mainland and put more of the Ancients there. Evidently it was quite the popular place at one time.

The creature then drew some stick figures in the area in between the island and the mainland, in an area that was not on the land bridge. The creature pointed at himself and then at the figures in the sea. He drew an arrow from the building on the mainland to the group of figures that evidently represented his people. Sheppard raised an eyebrow. If he was reading this correctly, the Ancients had something to do with putting the Gungan where they were. Could this be yet another instance of Ancient gene manipulation gone sideways? He nodded slightly. It was really likely. After all, they weren't exactly overrun by intelligent amphibian life forms in either galaxy.

The creature tried to wipe the board off, and Sheppard shook off his contemplation to do it himself. He propped it up again, and the creature drew a round object and then another round object above it. It looked at Sheppard and put a finger on the one above. It then moved its hand in a circular motion around the first circle, landing again on the second circle. It looked at Sheppard and must have seen his puzzlement. It took up the chalk again and drew a small oval on the first circle and then a larger irregular shape not far from the oval. It then drew a small line between the two. It looked back at Sheppard. He contemplated the picture for a moment, and then it came to him. It was the planet, and the other circle must be the moon. Wait, there were three moons, why draw only one? He contemplated that for a moment running the possibilities through his head. It took a moment for him to realize that he was looking at the picture from his own frame of reference instead of from the perspective of something that probably had never left the planet, had never been in space, that might not realize that the planet was not the center of the solar system. The second circle was the sun, circling the planet. He nodded to the creature that he understood. It nodded and began moving its hand in the circle rapidly. Sheppard took that to mean that it was trying to indicate the years passing. He nodded again.

The creature made wiping motions and he cleaned the board. It drew the mainland again, but now the big facility was in ruins. It drew the island, but the land bridge was gone. On the island it drew the stargate, and where the ruins where it drew a village. In the village it drew stick figures, but there were no robes and no symbol. It pointed at the stargate and then at the city. Sheppard took that to mean that the people in the city had come through the stargate a long time after the Ancients had gone. The Gungan drew another pair of circles and made the circling motion again. More time passed evidently.

Now it drew its people again, and some of the people from the village. He drew an arrow from his people to the island. At the end of the arrow it drew a stick figure lying down and another standing over it. It drew an arrow from the village to the one standing. Okay, it looked like relations had not been good. Evidently one of the humans had killed one of the Gungans.

The next series of pictures showed more confrontations, until the creature drew a group of each holding what Sheppard assumed were weapons, and facing each other. They had gone to war. He recognized that right off. It seemed that it was universal. Why settle things peacefully when you can simply pick up a big stick and beat your neighbor to death? He noticed that the creature had drawn more of its people than the humans. Evidently they had a bigger population. It was possible the humans hadn't known how many there were, and had assumed that the amphibians would be a push over. The Gungan drew the village again with the buildings broken. It drew the human stick figures going through the gate. Evidently the humans had run when the fight went against them.

As interesting as this all was, it was the next series of pictures that really peaked his interest. They had wiped the board again, and now the Gungan drew the gate again and this time drew in the DHD. It drew a stick figure that he recognized as being one of its kind standing next to the DHD. It pointed to the figure and looked at Sheppard, who nodded. It wiped the figure away with its hand and drew it again, but this time it was holding something small. The creature pointed to the DHD and then to the object in the stick figure's hand. It was obviously trying to tell him that the Gungan had taken something from the DHD. Since he only knew of one thing that was missing, it had to have been the control crystal. The Gungan saw his interest and made the wiping motion again. He complied.

The creature drew again, first the island then a stick figure. The figure was on the edge of the island, if it was to scale then it was at the same cliff he had first seen at the end of the path from the stargate. The figure held the small object again. Sheppard felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. The Gungan drew a dotted line from the figure's hand out over the emptiness that represented the sea. Sheppard's sinking feeling hit bottom. They had thrown away the crystal. He was so screwed.

He sank to the floor next to the mattress. He was stuck on this god-forsaken planet with only a race of frog people that he couldn't talk to and a bunch of birds that wanted to eat him as company. Up until this moment he had hoped that he would somehow be able to get off this planet, get back to Atlantis, save his friends…well that wasn't going to happen. It was as if he had just stepped through the stargate all over again. It all swept over him: abandonment, loneliness, anger, fear, everything he had fought to keep tamped down. He found himself blinking rapidly to keep the tears that had suddenly filled his eyes from falling. He was not going to break down in front of this alien Kermit the frog. He may not have much left, but he still had his pride. He'd wait until the creature was gone, and then he could become a pile of whimpering goo.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see the creature-Kermit, he decided-leaning over and patting him awkwardly. In the alien eyes he could see compassion and understanding. It understood. Maybe they weren't so different after all, despite the whole taxonomic diversion thing. He looked away, his eyes straying to the window. He was shocked to see the amount of snow that was falling. It was blowing almost horizontally past the window, which given the placement of the facility meant that in the open it would be blizzard conditions. Well he wasn't going to be going back for the bird today. It should be well preserved in the snow so he wasn't worried about it. He looked back at Kermit, who had followed his gaze. He could see the dismay in the golden eyes. Wherever the creature had come from, it was not going back now.

The last storm had lasted two days, and he doubted as they were moving deeper into the winter that this one was going to be any different. It looked like he was going to have a houseguest for a while. He looked around. They had plenty of supplies, and there was no worry about water or heat, so they were looking good that way. He needed to work out something about the sleeping arrangements since Kermit was using the bed. Right now it was lying on top of the sleeping bag wrapped in the squirrel-thing blanket. As Sheppard watched the creature shivered slightly and sank back down in the blanket. Sheppard sent a thought to the facility and warm air flowed around them Kermit looked around and then back at him. He shrugged. There was no way that he was going to be able to explain the gene with a round of 'Pictionary'.

Getting to his feet he went into his storeroom and dragged out the pile of skins that he had been collecting. It wouldn't be as soft as the air mattress, but it would do in a pinch. He then dragged his squirrel-thing coat over and plopped it down on top of the skins. That had the bed thing taken care of. He looked around again. Okay, so now what? He sat down on his pile of skins and looked at Kermit who was staring back at him. The Gungan seemed at a loss too. It was going to be a long day.

Chapter 7-

It had taken him almost a month to get everything in place, and McKay was just this side of simply grabbing a gun and shooting Lucius and putting them all out of their misery. The situation as a whole had been static. His staff was still going around the clock responding to little glitches through out the city. The temperature continued to vary wildly from one room to the next, and the gate still didn't work. What no one but McKay knew was that Atlantis had been getting a little bit of help. He had covertly been reversing everything that his engineers were doing to counteract the program. He had set up in Sheppard's quarters, with three laptops, a stash of pilfered MRE-he had to keep his strength up-and the ghost of his friend watching over his shoulder.

He had shuddered when the thought had first crossed his mind. He immediately refuted the idea that his friend was dead. He knew of no one who had the seemingly innate ability to return from any situation more than the Lt Colonel. Be it bugs, Wraith queens, time dilation fields, or rampaging Genii, he had every faith that Sheppard would survive it. For all he knew Sheppard was lounging on some alien beach with a harem of native beach bunnies sipping the Pegasus equivalent of mai tais. But something told him that was not the case. While Sheppard might be the human equivalent of the Energizer Bunny when it came to surviving weird happenings, he was definitely luck challenged. If McKay knew Sheppard at all, the man was probably huddled on an ice flow in an igloo fending off polar bears with an icicle and a friendly penguin.

But even with that, he still felt the man's presence here in this room. So far he had managed to make sure that no one knew that he had managed to access it. He only entered and exited when the LSD showed no one near by. Not that Atlantis would have let anyone else in, but he didn't want to explain why he was getting a bye from the city. It was hard enough to keep up the pretense of still liking Lucius. He was forced to fawn over the man like all the rest of them, but he was afraid that his powers of playacting were starting to wear a little thin. He had seen the looks Ronan had been throwing him, and more than once he had caught Lucius eyeing him suspiciously. He had a feeling that unless he wanted to become intimately familiar with Sheppard's circumstances that he better get on with his plan.

After a month of maneuvering he was ready. He had made all the plans, had put the programs in place. He had tried to cover all contingencies. That was impossible of course, but, genius here, so he was closer than anyone else would be to doing it. Based on what Sheppard had been trying to do, he figured he needed to isolate people for a week from the pheromones. He figured once he got people thinking straight then working together they could figure out how to get the rest of the city out from under the man's spell.

He had considered carefully about who he wanted to isolate. The choice and number would dictate the location. He had instantly included Beckett, Sheppard had known what he was doing, but he just hadn't counted on Ronan's bloodhound imitation. He had also included his teammates, not because he couldn't do this without them, but because he found himself not wanting to leave them there any longer than necessary. They were his family. Elizabeth was next, both because she was a friend and because she was at risk, in the same way Teyla was. So far the 'weddings' had been postponed, as had any prenuptial fooling around as far as he could determine, and he was damned if he would give the man the chance to make up for lost time. He had thought about including Zalenka, but in the end he discarded the idea. He was going to be too busy making sure no one was able to breech the isolation area to cover his tracks from someone who understood the systems. The Czech would too easily have spotted what he was doing, and he had no desire to be torn limb from limb by an enraged Satedan, and possibly others, if they figured out his plan. After a little prowling around through the personnel files, Atlantis was willing to offer him any access as long as he used the computers in Sheppard's quarters, he had decided on one of the other doctors, an olfactory specialist who had published numerous articles on the effects of pheromones. That was six people, and he had to believe that it would be enough.

Once he determined whom, he had to determine where. It had to be somewhere that he could get everyone for a plausible reason. He couldn't exactly leave anonymous notes asking them to meet him on the west pier and then carry them off to his isolation area. No, it had to appear to be an accident. He needed to consider food, water, heat, light…all the things that would be needed to keep them alive had to be available. Then there was the question of maintaining the isolation. The recent problems with the city would allow him the cause, but he needed to be able to counteract any efforts to release them, all under the guise of trying to free them, and that meant he had to have some computer access.

He had finally settled on the infirmary as being the best place. He could cut off the whole area around the infirmary, and they would be isolated from the rest of the city. He could lock all the balcony accesses, and turn off the transports into the area. It should effectively do the job. This determined he started stockpiling food in one of the stockrooms near the infirmary. He moved twelve cases of the precious MRE into the room one at a time. He also moved in several cases of other supplies, pencils, batteries, some toilet paper, to make it appear that it had simply been a storage error. He would make sure one of the others found them after he had a nice panic attack about how they would all starve.

Next he needed a plan to get his chosen few into place while getting everyone else out. It turned out that Beckett provided the opportunity himself. The doctor had been slogging through Lucius' various 'cures' extolling the virtues of each, though as far as McKay could tell not so much as a rash had been cured on all the mice that Beckett had tested. The Scot had persevered however, putting the lack of results down to the lack of fresh herbs. Lucius had seized on that idea like a drowning man, and McKay had had to literally bite his tongue to keep from sneering at the man.

Beckett was thinking that he was on to something, and he was practically salivating at the thought of showing it off in front of Lucius. McKay had happened to catch Beckett just before he had called Lucius, and had suggested that perhaps it would be best if he demonstrated his findings on a small group of his friends before bringing it to Lucius' attention. The alchemist was a busy man after all, though McKay couldn't think of one thing the man had done for himself since he had gotten here. It seemed logical to suggest their closest friends as a sample group. Beckett had seized on the idea as his own, and had called down Elizabeth and Teyla immediately. McKay had slyly suggested that Ronan, being familiar with folk remedies from his long time on the run would be a good person to show too, and Beckett had chivvied the man into it in his uniquely kind yet pushy way. As McKay had suspected, Ronan, who was still grateful for Beckett's intervention on Sateda, had agreed.

Soon they were all there, except for the pheromone specialist. Just before he went into Beckett's lab off the main infirmary he took out his PDA and pushed in a series of numbers. Atlantis sent a series of numbers back to him, and he knew that the programs he had put in place had activated. He faintly heard a city wide call for medical personnel to report to the east pier for an emergency. He stood out of the way as the nurses and doctors in the infirmary took off running. He looked toward Beckett's lab, no sign of anyone. Good, his dampeners had worked. Neither the radios nor the speakers in Beckett's lab had echoed the call. A few minutes later Dr Tomiko Sanyo came through the door of the infirmary breathing hard as if she had run. She looked around, and when she saw McKay she came over to him.

"I got a call to come immediately to see Dr Fitzhugh. I do not see him, have you?" She asked him timidly. He shook his head.

"There was some sort of emergency call. I think you should stay here and wait until he comes back." He said with a shrug. He headed toward the lab, punching another number into his PDA. He pretended not to 'hear' the click as the doors all locked, and continued into the lab as if he had simply been checking his email. He stuffed his PDA back in his pocket as he mentally closed the door behind him. "All right Beckett, lets see this voodoo herb that you think you've found. I just hope there's no dancing around a fire or any chicken entrails." He said cheerfully.

Five hours later he didn't have to fake the miserable whine he made as he pretended for the umpteenth time to try to override the lock on the door to the infirmary. In fact he was counteracting everything that Radek was trying from his end, not an easy process as the man was not anywhere near as stupid as McKay usually told him he was. Luckily Atlantis was helping out by making it appear that it was the city itself that was working against him. He had programmed in a problem with the radios as well, and so it was cutting in and out at irregular intervals. That added a bit of entertainment.

He had thought the whole game was up earlier when Ronan had threatened to blast a hole in one of the doors. They would get out, and the whole plan would go to hell. But Atlantis came through for him. There was suddenly a shield all around the infirmary. It was probably made for some sort of isolation protocol that they hadn't activated before, thank god, but it did the job. Ronan was barely able to dodge the ricochet of his own shot, and Beckett's gurney was never going to be used again. That had been the last of that plan. Now it was all up to him and his engineers it seemed, and he had every faith in his own ability to outwit the whole crowd, genius here after all.

Another 20 hours later he had been proved right on one front and wrong on another. Radek and the others had not managed to get the doors open, but they had gotten the communications back up. How disappointing. He was going to have to find out who had done it, and find out why they had been acting like an idiot all this time. This meant that someone had been pretending to be stupid so that that they didn't have to work, and he was not going to stand for that in his department. The group outside was getting a little excited now, thinking that they had a plan on how to circumvent the doors and shields. Can't have that. McKay took out his PDA again, and making sure that no one was paying him any mind punched in another series of numbers. There was a distant rumble and seconds later the floor of the infirmary trembled.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Beckett said. They could hear alarms sounding now, and McKay dove for his computer and started typing furiously, though mainly to keep the smile of satisfaction from showing to the others. He was well aware of what had happened. He had set up an overload in one of the distant flooded areas. Well, semi-flooded anyway. He had fixed the power grid so that the overload had built slowly, so that it would not be seen. He had also removed sensors in that area from the sensor net, a process that he had done over the last month so as not to cause any interest. It had simply been put down as the result of the ongoing flooding, and no one had been concerned. That meant two things, one, they would have had no warning about the overload reaching critical, and now that it had blown, they had no way of knowing what had happened or what the damage might be. That meant that they would have to send out teams to look at it, and McKay, working with a very cooperative Atlantis, had made sure that was going to be as difficult as possible. There was no working transporter within an hour's walking distance, and the rooms were located in a part of Atlantis that offered no access via the jumpers, not that Atlantis would have let any launch right now anyway. All in all, they would have to turn their attention to a possible threat situation instead of trying to get six people out of a perfectly safe infirmary.

The whole subterfuge with the overload had bought him another 24 hours. He had not expected it to be so good, but Atlantis had added a few things of her own, and it seemed that the base was convinced that they were under attack by the Wraith. Ronan had gone nearly ballistic at that, and had gotten a truly impressive set of bruises from flinging himself against the shield over the door. Only Teyla's annoyed order for him to stop had put an end to it. It had in fact been that very annoyance that had given McKay the hope that the isolation was working the way Sheppard had hoped it would. If Teyla could be annoyed, then something was definitely going on.

The next ten hours had been a revelation to McKay. He had watched as his friends, people that he had thought that he knew had total and complete meltdowns. All of a sudden the calm and cool warriors, diplomats, and physicians that he had known became griping, sarcastic, whining, angry people that he really wanted to run away from. No one was safe from the sarcasm, the denigration, the accusations of inadequacy-both mental and physical. It was like he was suddenly trapped in an incredibly small space with…himself. He had to admit that he suddenly had a flash of empathy for his own department. He now knew exactly what his people put up with on a daily basis when he was in one of his pissier moods. He was not prepared to admit, not even to himself, that perhaps it wasn't just the pissy days either. In any event, he was surely racking up some good karma points now by staying in the isolation with these people even though he could have ended it at any time. He simply gritted his teeth, snarled back at whomever happened to be closest, and had immersed himself in causing havoc for the rest of the city. If he was somewhat more vindictive than he had first meant to be, well he had to do something to keep from getting himself beat to death by a Ronan who was so edgy and grumpy that a Wraith would have simply curled up and died rather than even approach him. They would have left the galaxy all together rather than deal with Teyla.

It was the middle of the fifth night that they had been trapped that it happened. He had been sitting on one of the beds, working at his computer, supposedly trying to get them out, but actually playing minesweeper when Ronan had suddenly sat up on the bed next to him. McKay had almost fallen off his own bed at the sudden movement, afraid that the Satedan had finally snapped and was going to kill them all. Instead, the ex-runner had sat there unmoving for several minutes, staring off into the darkness of the rest of the infirmary. They were spread out throughout the big room. Elizabeth and Teyla, who had come to the point of a hair pulling catfight earlier, were in separate corners. Dr Sanyo was holed up in one of the other corners huddled up in a ball under the blankets, where she had been for the last two days, crying her eyes out mostly. Beckett was in his lab, where he had basically locked himself in after telling them that they could all go to hell. McKay had been surprised when the Satedan had thrown himself down on the nearby bed, but had refused to leave. He supposed that the man was simply seeking some male company in the face of the female threat. But now…he watched the other man out of the corner of his eye, pretending to go on with his process. He had almost thought that it was nothing when Ronan spoke, in a subdued tone that was nothing like his regular rumble.

"He walked through on his own, but I would have pushed him through if he hadn't. I remember that I sneered at him because he didn't fight it. I laughed about it with Lorne and the Marines after he was gone. He said my name and I didn't feel anything." The ex-runner turned his head and McKay could see the self-loathing in the dark eyes. He felt a thrill of something go through him. When he didn't say anything Ronan looked away toward the doors. "You've got to get us out of here McKay. I know where we sent him."

Rodney stared at the other man for a moment, unsure how he should proceed. He would not have called Ronan the subtlest of men, but he could be sneaky, and this _could_ be some sort of ploy to draw him, Rodney, out. It was possible that the Satedan had become suspicious of him over the last several days and was doing this to make him say something damning. He decided to err on the side of caution. Getting himself killed wouldn't get Atlantis free, or save Sheppard from who knew what.

"But Lucius said that it was best for Sheppard to go. That the planet was a paradise and that Sheppard would be fine there. It was best for everyone that he went." He said, trying to keep the sneer out of his voice. It wasn't easy faking the ass kissing. He gulped as Ronan's head snapped around hard enough to make his own neck hurt. He saw incredulity in the eyes this time, and anger, and something else, something he had seen in his own mirror when the first realization of what they had allowed to happen had hit him. Almost before he could blink the Satedan was at his bedside, his hands were wrapped around McKay's upper arms, and he was shaking him like a maraca.

"Don't you EVER say that! He's our friend. We should have never sent him anywhere. We should have listened to him." He growled. McKay tried to jerk himself loose before his brain was whipped into something resembling a fruit smoothie, but wasn't having much luck. He tried to push away, but failed that too. He was pretty sure that he would have ended up with the adult version of shaken baby syndrome if the bigger man hadn't stopped on his own. He dropped his hands and leaned against the side of the bed, head drooping. He stood there breathing hard as McKay tried to get his eyes to focus again. Finally Ronan looked up at him, and there was an unfamiliar vulnerability in the usually hard eyes.

"Why did we do that McKay? He's our leader, our friend, our family." He whispered. McKay blinked a few more times, and was happy to see the room settling down again. He looked toward the corners of the room, and could see no stirring, so he turned back to Ronan. He met the dark eyes.

"We've been under the influence of pheromones. It has something to do with the damn herb that he sent you, Teyla, and the others for. It makes everyone want to please him, want to do anything for him…even turn on someone that would never do the same to us." He answered in a voice pitched just as low. He didn't want to chance the others overhearing. "I take it you don't have that urge anymore?" He had to be sure. Ronan shook his head and McKay could see the fierceness return.

"I want to squeeze his fat neck until his eyes pop out of his head and then I want to kick his ass through the gate to a Wraith planet and listen as he screams his life away." was his answer. McKay blinked. Okay, that was pretty unambiguous. He picked up his computer from where it had fallen on the bed. He closed out the Minesweeper and brought his other program. It had all the details of what he had set up, starting with the isolation of the infirmary. He turned it toward the Satedan, knowing that the man had been working on reading English for the last year and had made good progress. Ronan glanced at the computer and read the first few lines. His eyes flew up to meet McKay's. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the Satedan picked up the computer and went to sit on his bed, reading steadily. McKay lay back onto his pillows, and tried to keep the grin off his face. It was coming together.

Two days later everyone in the infirmary had thrown off the effects of the pheromones. Each one had gone through the realization of what they had done in the name of Lucius, and the guilt level was sometimes uncomfortable. Only Dr. Sanyo did not have personal issues about what had been done to Sheppard, though she had managed to take a portion of everyone else's guilt and had run with it, breaking down into sobs at irregular intervals. McKay was beginning to wonder how the woman had survived this long in the Pegasus Galaxy with its constant crisis and high emotion. The woman must be a basket case all the time.

Beckett had been the last of them to get free of the pheromones, perhaps because he had been exposed the longest. The man had been practically disconsolate when he realized that it had been he who had brought Lucius here, who had exposed them all. After moping for several hours, Ronan had intervened and told the man to suck it up and get to working on how they were going to take back the city. McKay had explained to them all, along with some technical support in the soft science side from Sanyo, about what needed to be done to free the rest of the city, and Ronan was raring to go. As far as he was concerned the others just needed to get on with it.

In the end it was all rather anticlimactic. Beckett and Sanyo had retreated into Beckett's lab and had talked voodoo and cast runes for almost eight hours straight. Finally they had emerged, the Scot triumphant and Sanyo weepy, and had presented them with a gas that once it was hooked into the ventilation system would cancel the effects of the pheromones. They had also came up with a shot that would make everyone immune from any effects in the future should they ever be exposed again. As they had projected it had taken less than 24 hours before the first of the others showed signs of breaking free of the thrall of the pheromones. It was predictably those who had the least amount of contact with Lucius who were first. McKay and the others had kept an eye out, and at the first signs of discontent they had moved in with the shots and explanations. One by one and then in larger groups they had turned the expedition against Lucius.

It had been decided that they would wait until everyone had been 'turned' before they would move against the alchemist, least they be forced to act against their own people. They didn't want someone under the influence trying to protect the man. The last person to be turned was Zalenka. He had been spending the most time with Lucius lately, trying to fix the various problems with the alchemist hanging over his shoulder all the time. McKay had been forced to remove himself from the man's presence, acknowledging his own inability to act out the necessary simpering, and it had been Teyla, playing the blushing fiancée to the hilt, who had given him the shot when he had suddenly pointed out that Lucius' idea's about engineering matters were incredibly stupid.

As soon as she had pushed the plunger on the hypodermic that she had stuck in Zalenka's thigh, Ronan, who had been hovering in his guise of bodyguard had literally picked Lucius up and slammed him against the nearest wall. He had then tried to stuff his gun as far down the man's throat as it would go. Teyla had called Elizabeth and Rodney as soon as she had put away the hypodermic, and was trying to talk Ronan out of killing Lucius when they had arrived. The alchemist had ordered and cajoled, and finally whined as he realized that they were no longer under the influence. He had been handed off to Lorne and a squad of Marines to be put into one of the holding cells. The general consensus among the senior staff was to wait to see what had happened to Sheppard. If they found the colonel still alive and well, then they would let him have some input on what should be done with the man. If they found him dead…they were all trying not to think about that possibility, but they had, and if that were the case, then all bets were off. McKay was pretty sure it would just be a matter of who got to Lucius first after that. He had some ideas about it himself, and had had a rather long talk with Atlantis about it, though it had been he that did the talking. Never let it be said that the wrath of Rodney was any less than that of Ronan or Teyla. He might not be as physical, but he was meaner.

When they finally had Lucius locked away, McKay managed to convince Atlantis that they were once again in their right minds, and that they were going to get Sheppard. The city systems had suddenly returned to normal, and it was if the whole temperature thing had never happened. The humid areas were drying out, and the hot areas suddenly had cool air wafting through out. The lights all snapped back to full strength, and the doors all started working well again. They had control again. The next step was to check out the viability of the gate. McKay was about to punch in the address to the alpha site as a test when the outer ring lit up. The alarms started sounding.

"Unscheduled gate activation." He snapped, realizing that he hadn't heard those words in months now. He waited as the last of the chevrons locked, then grimaced as he realized that the address was eight symbols long and not seven. It was the SGC. He had kind of hoped that they could rescue Sheppard before they had to explain this all to Earth, but it looked like that was not going to happen. They wormhole stabilized, and he flipped the switch that would allow the incoming radio signal that he detected to be heard. Elizabeth and the others, who had been standing by to see the gate test all turned to look at the gate as General Landry's voice rang out through the gate room.

"This is the SGC to all personnel in Atlantis. If you are receiving this message then you must reply immediately. This is your last opportunity. The Daedalus is in orbit above the planet now. They have been ordered to take whatever steps are necessary to insure that the city is not a threat to the Milky Way Galaxy and Earth. This includes the use of nuclear weaponry. If you are receiving this message you must immediately drop all shields and power down any active weaponry." As soon as Landry finished Elizabeth raised her hand and keyed her radio.

"SGC, this is Weir. Please call off the attack. We are lowering the shields now." She nodded at Zelenka, who was sitting at the console. With a nervous look around at the rest of them, the Czech complied. The shield dropped, and there was a lull that had everyone shifting nervously. Finally they heard Landry again.

"We have just received confirmation from the Daedalus that you have dropped your shields. Would anyone care to explain what has been going on for the last several months?"

"It's a very long story, general, one that will take considerably longer than 38 minutes to tell. I can assure you though that we have taken care of the problem. If you agree, we are prepared to welcome Colonel Caldwell and a contingent of his Marines to verify that we are indeed all right. But before we do that, we have to be able to use the gate. We have something very important that we have to take care of."

"And what is that Dr. Weir?" Landry asked. Rodney saw Elizabeth blink rapidly several times. Her chin came up, and she spoke firmly.

"We need to get part of our family back." John Sheppard had been gone for five months.

Chapter 8-

They had been trapped inside the facility for most of three days before the snow stopped blowing by the huge window. Not that the cessation of the blizzard had done any good, there was four feet of snow outside the door, and that was in a protected area. The rest of the island probably had much more. Kermit had slept a lot, trying to recover from his wound, the first day. It had been slightly feverish, well it _seemed_ that it was feverish to Sheppard. The golden eyes had been glazed and it had moved restlessly around on the bed. He had done what he could to cool it with water, reluctant to give it any of his aspirin or ibuprofen, no telling what the drugs might do to its alien system.

On the second day Kermit had rallied, and so the boredom had begun. Sheppard had tried working on his formulas, but was distracted by the restless attention of the other creature. It had watched him, and for a while he thought maybe it might understand at least part of the mathematics, but when he tried some simple formula Kermit had looked blankly at the symbols and shook its head. Okay, not going to communicate through mathematics then. Another hope shot down.

In the end he had taught the creature how to play Soduku. Of course he had been forced to teach it Arabic numbers first. That had taken some time, but Kermit seemed to be a quick learner. After the math puzzles had palled the creature had taught Sheppard the symbols of his numerals, and they had played a game that Sheppard decided to call tic, tac, no toe, since he could not pronounce the grunt/hiss that Kermit produced for it. It had been a tough game, and he made a mental note to try to adapt it to Arabic numerals. Though who he was going to play it with he didn't have a clue. It was midway through the third day that he had realized that the Gungan had a base six mathematical system.

His mind had reeled at the thought of a completely new field of mathematics. He had of course known that others could exist, but had never dealt with a system that was so very far outside of those that he was used to. Unfortunately it seemed that Kermit had only a basic knowledge of his own system, and so was not able to help Sheppard very much. The earthman had made a mental note to get in touch with some of the Gungan's math people. Maybe there was communications after all. He also had an inkling in the back of his head, almost an itch, which said that there was something about the base six that would help him in his formula. He put it aside for later contemplation.

He had pulled out a deck of cards that someone had thoughtfully included in his survival supplies and was well on his way to teaching the amphibian how to play poker when the blizzard had stopped. He had gone to the door and thought it open, only to jump back as some of the accumulated pile had dropped in the doorway. He had looked out over the sea, still open despite the cold, and realized that this was how the Gungan must survive here at this high latitude. Since the water was so warm all they had to do was stay in the water while the snow fell, and they were fine. He wondered again why Kermit had been out and about. He looked back at the creature that was sitting up on the bed looking with some dismay at the pile of snow. Their eyes met, and Sheppard could have sworn that he saw tears in the golden eyes for a moment before the bulby head had dropped. Evidently the creature would not be going home today.

He had closed the door, kicking the snow to the edge of the room to melt, and had gone back to the bed. He reached out a tentative hand and put it on the greenish shoulder. The creature was trembling slightly, and when it looked up at him Sheppard could see that the threatening tears had appeared, and were running down its face. It hiss/croaked a series of words that made no sense at all to Sheppard, but in which he could hear the fear and despair that the other must be feeling. He assumed that the creature had family and friends out there somewhere that would be waiting and worrying about it. He had to tamp down a flare of almost burning envy as that though had come. No one was missing him. No one cared that HE hadn't come home. No one would be worrying about what had happened to him in the cold darkness of this damn planet. He nervously patted the shoulder, and found himself suddenly with an armful of amphibian that was sobbing into his chest.

Okaaaay.

After several minutes of this he had decided that there was the barest possibility that the creature might not be the contemporary in age that Sheppard had been imagining it to be. In fact he was wondering if the thing was old enough to be out on its own at all given the amount of crying it seemed to be doing. This put a whole new spin on things. He hadn't a clue about how its society was structured, but he was sure that it couldn't be too different from his own. He tried to think this through. If he had been in Afghanistan and had ended up with the child of Taliban supporters, even if he had no evil intentions, his actions would be viewed with suspicion. There might even be preemptive assumptions of those intentions, and a preemptive retaliation/revenge. In other words they would be more likely to kill him for what he might have done than thank him for what he actually had done. Well crap, this place had just managed to get worse.

Kermit had basically cried itself to sleep, and Sheppard had the next several hours to contemplate just how he was going to get out of this particular sticky situation. The best bet, he decided, was to get the creature back to the water as soon as possible, at least as soon as it was able to swim. It wasn't as if he could just throw the thing back in the sea like it was some undersized trout, and hope that it made it home okay. No, he wanted to be sure that Kermit made it home in fine shape, and able to tell its adult friends, the same type that had driven off the humans once before, that the funny looking guy on the island was friendly. He had settled down for the night with this goal in mind.

He dreamed that night of Atlantis. He was in the gateroom, and all his friends were there, going about their regular business. He tried to talk with them, but was ignored. It was like they didn't even see him. When he tried to follow Teyla out of the gateroom he found that the doors would not work for him, and he realized that the familiar buzz of his connection with Atlantis was gone. He had to wait until someone else came in before he could slip out the doors. He caught up with Teyla in the mess hall, and found her sitting down for a meal with Ronan and McKay. As he watched, ignored by the people passing around him, they laughed and joked and talked, not missing him in the slightest. He sidled a little closer, still seemingly invisible.

"I'm telling you, we don't need another teammate. We have everything we need now. I'm the science genius, obviously. Teyla here is the diplomat and knows everyone around. You got the military, scary bad thing going on, Conan, so what else is there? Sheppard was unnecessary. We all knew it. Now we don't have to deal with him anymore. Tell me something that he did that we can't do between us?" McKay was saying. Sheppard blinked at the contempt that he heard in the scientists voice when he spoke of him.

"He had the gene." Ronan said, chewing on a chicken tender.

"I've got the gene too." McKay pointed out. "Maybe it's not as strong, but let's face it, when did his having the most powerful gene bring us anything but trouble?" Ronan nodded, obviously accepting the answer.

"Okay with me. Sheppard was too caught up with his 'rules'. Couldn't see that when you fight the Wraith there are no rules." He said. He looked at Teyla, as did Sheppard. "What about you?"

The beautiful Athosian tilted her head and gave a slight smile.

"Why do you bother to ask when you have already made up your minds?" She said. The two men shared a look and then looked back at her. Her smile grew. "You expect me to tell Elizabeth that we have no need of a forth team member." She guessed. McKay looked shamefaced and Ronan smiled at her. She shook her head at them with a small frown. She sighed.

"Very well. I will talk to Elizabeth but only because I agree with you. Colonel Sheppard caused a great deal of harm when he woke the Wraith, and while he might have regretted that action, he could not make up for the deaths that he caused. He had little talent as a negotiator and less patience. We will indeed be better off without him." McKay and Ronan nodded in agreement. Sheppard stumbled back from the table at her words. His team was moving on without him. What's more it seemed he had been a liability to them, a third wheel, a bad-luck piece.

He looked around the room. Everyone was going on about his or her business, ignoring him, not missing him at all. He hadn't expected wailing and beating of breasts, but it would have been nice if someone had at least missed him a little. He looked from group to group, listening as they talked and laughed. Life was going on here with out him. They didn't need him. They were just going to let him rot on Elba, and not give him another thought. He turned and ran out of the room, heading he didn't know where, but needing to get away. He found himself on the end of the west pier, the place where he had often come to think, to remember, to commune with Atlantis. But now Atlantis didn't answer when he 'called' out to her. There was silence where her constant hum had always been since they had come. He walked over to the wall and put a hand on it. Where before it had always warmed under his palm now there was only cold.

He turned from the wall, and found himself not on the pier, but on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a raging sea. He spun around to where the wall had just been, but there was nothing there but another cliff. Atlantis was gone. He was on a pinnacle of rock sticking out of an endless sea, surrounded on all sides by raging ocean. He peered over the side of his island, such as it was. Far below him he could see the angry sea eating at the base of his pinnacle. As he watched a chunk of rock fell off into the water, leaving a thinner area supporting the column of stone. The sea beat harder at the weak spot, seemingly focusing in on it. As he watched helplessly from far above the waves continued to beat away at the rock. There was nothing he could do. He knew it was only a matter of time. He looked around again. Still nothing. Damn it.

He looked back down and watched as what he knew was the pivotal piece fell out from the pillar of rock. As it dropped away he felt the rock under his feet begin to shift. As it tilted further and further over he forced himself to climb against the tilt, delaying the inevitable it might be, but he was not going to let death simply take him. He screamed his defiance as he looked down at the approaching waves and…Sat up wide-awake and shivering on top of his pile of skins in the facility on Elba.

Wiping a hand over his face, he thought the lights up slightly and looked over at Kermit. The creature had not awoken, so Sheppard assumed he had not made any noise. That was good. The Gungan didn't need to think that his rescuer was slowly going nuts or maybe not so slowly. He pushed himself to his feet and went to the window, looking out over the moon-washed vista. The sky was clear, and he could look out over the snowy land to the open sea.

It was beautiful, but it wasn't what he wanted to see. He wanted to see the ocean around Atlantis. He looked back at Kermit. He could hear him breathing. He was glad the creature was alive and healing, but he wanted to hear the steady breathing of one of his teammates as they shared a tent on some faraway planet during a mission. He looked around at the facility. It had kept him comfortable and warm, and its voice spoke softly in his head, but it wasn't the ancient facility that he wanted to see. He wanted the familiar corridors of Atlantis, the sun streaming through the stained glass of the control room. He wanted to hear her thrill of delight as he came back through the gate at the end of a mission. To feel her contented hum, almost a lullaby, as he fell asleep at night.

The dream came back to him with almost startling clarity. He knew that it was all in his head. Abandonment issues, low self esteem, feelings of alienation, hell, separation anxiety. Oh he had it all. The longer he was here the worse it got. He knew, really knew, that his friends would never speak of him as they had in his dream. He knew that Atlantis would not give him the cold shoulder. But the longer he was here…He shook his head. That was not getting him anywhere. He had to stop feeling sorry for himself, or he really was going to go nuts.

He focused on the scene before him, tired and a little afraid of too much introspection; that way led nowhere good. Knowing thyself was only applicable when there was something worth knowing. The silver light of the twin moons showed that the snow was starting to melt off. He thought that they could probably make it down to the beach in a day or two without too much trouble. He thought that Kermit would be ready by then, though he wasn't too sure exactly how far away the city to which the creature had alluded was. Maybe it was close to his island or was closer to the mainland. He would have to count on the creature having enough sense not to go if it wasn't ready. Yeah, that always worked out so well for him.

He supposed he could make some sort of raft and carry Kermit closer to his home before it took to the water, but then they were back to being like snacks on a plate for any passing birdzilla that happened to spot them. Having seen that one going in for a 'fly-through' meal, and the other one up close and personal had been enough. No, rafting was out. He wondered if the creature's kind had any kind of underwater vehicles, submarines, scuba shuttles, etc. He had a feeling that they probably didn't, but it would have been nice if the kid had the family submarine parked in the bay and all he had to do was slip down and drive off. He sighed. Enough of the borrowing trouble thing. He would have to count on the kid's common sense. It had seemed smart enough when it hid in the downed trees to elude the bird, that shouldn't have changed. All would be well. He had to believe that. He wasn't going to let this planet, his circumstances, suck all his natural optimism out of him. Kermit would make it home, and so would he, one way or the other. With that he turned and went back to his improvised bed, climbing back under his squirrel-thing coat. He thought the light down and closed his eyes. He hoped he would not dream again.

He hadn't dreamed that night, or on any of the three nights since then. He woke on that forth day and found Kermit standing in front of the big window, one hand on it, looking longingly out at the sea. When it heard him stirring it had turned and looked at him. Sheppard could see the sadness in its eyes before it started to speak. It gestured to the sea, then to itself. The hiss/croak/grunt was no more intelligible than before, but Sheppard got the message that the creature thought that it was ready to make the trip home.

The snow had faded down to just a few feet, and while it was cold, it had been nice enough that yesterday Sheppard had gone out and brought back the frozen carcass of the bird he had killed. It had tasted a little like turkey, and Sheppard had longed for some mayo, and some bread, so that he could have a sandwich. He had satisfied himself with a few roasted pieces however and had stored the rest outside in a convenient rock outcrop that he called his freezer. He had kept a close look out, but had seen no new footprints in the new snow. Evidently Kermit's people hadn't come looking for him, at least not here. They were probably confining their search to the watery depths, since he had a feeling that Kermit had kind of explored past the usual boundaries. He hoped the kid wouldn't be in too much trouble. He kind of liked a creature with an adventurous spirit.

He nodded and pulled himself up out of his bed. He had to stop and stretch his back, he wasn't as young as he used to be, and the pile of furs, while not uncomfortable, were not the best for his aging back. He hadn't been able to do his running recently, and while he had done his sit ups and push ups, much to Kermit's puzzlement, they were not as good for him as the running. He was thinking about making himself some snowshoes. He had seen some old timers in Antarctica make some damn good time on them.

Once he was up and dressed he tried to figure out the logistics of this process. They had about five hundred feet to climb down to get to the beach and then another fifty feet to the water. Not real far, but there was the snow to consider, and the fact that his houseguest was not made for very cold weather. He had noted that the creature was uncomfortable in the usual cool conditions that he had kept the facility at. He was used to the mild temperatures of Atlantis, and so he had mentally had the facility keeping things at a similar level. When he had seen the Gungan shivering even with the covers he had cranked up the heat permanently to a more comfortable level. The snow was going to be a challenge for the amphibian. There was really only one thing to do.

He had been working on this idea since he had realized that it wouldn't be long until the creature wanted to go. He went back to his bed and dug around among the furs. He had been using some of their down time to do a little sewing. He held up a smaller version of his own squirrel thing coat for the Gungan to see. A big smile came across its face as it realized what he was offering. It took it and pulled it on, stroking the soft fur with one hand. Sheppard then reached down and pulled out the moccasins that he had also made, and pointed to his own feet. Kermit smiled again and put them on as well. The gangly creature looked even more odd in the admittedly badly tailored outfit, but Sheppard could tell from the grin that it did not care about that. He got into his own gear and motioned toward the door.

A half hour of stumbling through the snow, falling in a few hidden pits, and generally goofing around to test new snow gear later, they made it to the edge of the water. The snow went right to the edge of the warm sea, ending in a three-foot cliff at the shallows. Sheppard motioned Kermit back while he stomped down an area so that it could simply walk right down a slope into the water. Once he was done he looked at the creature and it looked back at him. It wasn't like they could say any heartfelt goodbyes, at least not and have the other understand it. They weren't even friends really, just companions for a while. But at least the creature had been somebody, another someone beside himself in this lonely place. Sheppard was sorry to see it go. He held out a hand, and after a moment the amphibian reciprocated the gesture. Sheppard gently closed his hand around the thinner one and shook it up and down with a slight smile. Kermit seemed to understand then, and shook his hand back. Then it reached up and placed its three-fingered hand on Sheppard's shoulder and squeezed twice. Sheppard, being a quick study returned the gesture.

Kermit looked down at his furs, and Sheppard could see that the creature was reluctant to part with the items. Evidently clothing was not something that the Gungan of this planet felt a need for, unlike their movie counterparts. He gestured to the clothes and then back toward his home. He tried to use sign language to get across that he would keep the clothes in the facility for Kermit in case he visited again. After a few tries, he thought he got the idea across as the smile returned again. Maybe this communicating without words wasn't so hard after all. Kermit stripped down and stepped into the water, sighing in relief as it felt the warmth around it. It said a few words in its language, and Sheppard nodded and waved, hoping that it was just saying goodbye, and not something else. It waved back, and marched out into the water, slowly disappearing from his view. Once it had submerged all the way he stood there for several minutes, wondering idly if the creatures simply walked along the bottom, or if they swam once they got in deep enough.

It was clear after about ten minutes that Kermit was not going to return, and he trudged back toward his home, carrying the furs. He would keep them on hand in case Kermit came back; he had not been making that up. He wasn't sure how that was going to work out however. If Gungan parents were anything like human ones, Kermit was probably going to be in quite a bit of trouble when it got home, and it might not have the freedom to come back anytime soon. That didn't change Sheppard's determination to save them however. If he was going to be stuck here, he hoped that at least he could have the occasional company of another sentient being, even if they could only talk in pictures or gestures.

The next several weeks were lonelier than they had been since he had first arrived. He had to get used to being alone all over again, and he almost hoped that the amphibian would never come back. If it was going to hurt like this every time maybe it would be better…no, he would rather have some company and regret it than none and still regret it. He worked on his formula through another snowstorm, and made those snow shoes he had been thinking about. It had taken a few false starts, but he soon had a reasonable facsimile of the shoes he had seen at McMurdo. He found that the snowshoeing was as challenging as the running, in fact more so as it took more effort to do it quickly. He was making a circuit of the island daily, weather permitting, and sticking with his indoor exercises for the days it didn't.

He had been alone again for three weeks when he first saw the footprints in the snow on the beach. Three toes and what he now knew was webbing between them. They appeared to only be on the very edge of the water. He checked the next day, but there were no new marks. Another day, and this time there were prints all the way up near his home. He wasn't sure, but he thought that these prints were bigger than Kermit's had been, and that more than one set of feet had made them. That night he sat up watching from inside the facility. No one came.

It was the same for the next two nights as he waited again, but still no one showed. He finally gave it up and went back to sleeping nights figuring that if they wanted to interact with him they would do so. It wasn't as if he didn't have time to wait. He went about his days, snowshoeing around the island in the dim light of the 'day' and spending a lot of time working on some new clothes. He needed some new pants; his BDUs were about to give up the ghost. You could only beat something against a rock so many times before it started getting holes. Since he had no material except for the squirrel thing skins he had figured out how to scrap the fur off and was making good progress on creating a pair of pants that would at least keep him from freezing his ass off in the biting wind. He was making two pair since he figured that they wouldn't take to cleaning very well. He was becoming quite good at the tailoring thing. Not something he had ever had an ambition to perfect.

Another week and he was out and about modeling his new sartorial splendor on a 'run' around the island. He liked to think that it was getting slightly lighter, though he was pretty sure that there were at least a few more planet months before the sun would return. He had made a side trip to the gate for his weekly check on any gate activity, and was not surprised to see that it was almost completely covered in snow. The open clearing had evidently been angled just right to the prevailing wind and most of what had fallen had been packed into the gate like a plug. He was pretty sure that the gate was completely unusable from either direction now since the outer ring could not rotate. If it was one of the 'digital' types like on Atlantis it might have been another matter, but this was the old fashioned type like they had found through out the Milky Way Galaxy and some of the Pegasus Galaxy as well. It didn't really matter he guessed, but at least he didn't have to worry about Wraith dropping by. Uninvited guests could be such a pain when you had limited resources.

He wondered briefly if the Gungan had any experience with the Wraith. If they did live under the water and didn't come out all that often, there was a good possibility that they had never had the pleasure. However they may have seen the effects of cullings on the humans who had been here in the past, or even had some records of the Wraith from back when the Ancients were still around. He wasn't even sure if the Wraith could feed of the Gungan. As far as he knew they only fed off humans, and the Gungan might be just different enough to be off the menu. He suspected that even if they did know it was not a major concern.

With a shrug for questions that might never be answered he had completed his run and had returned to his facility. He was making his way carefully down the icy path when he looked up to find himself facing a group of Gungan standing between him and the facility. There were four of them in the front, and another three standing farther back. These must be adult Gungan as they stood his own height, though they were mostly long skinny legs and arms, out of proportion with their torso length. These Amphibians had weapons, though nothing as sophisticated as firearms, Instead they had what looked disturbingly like spear guns powered by stretched rubber bands. The spears in the guns were short, metal, and tipped with a nasty looking multi hooked barb that he assumed was good for catching fish. It would make a nasty wound in any flesh that it hit. He slid his right hand down to his sidearm, flipping off the strap that held it in place while he ran, and pushing back his coattail. He didn't draw it, but he was ready to if this got ugly. He wasn't even sure if they would recognize it for what it was. He didn't want to hurt anyone anyway. He could always retreat back onto the island. They weren't exactly dressed for the weather and it would only get colder as the short 'day' became night. He would be cold, but he would survive it. They probably wouldn't if they were true amphibians.

The tense moment seemed to go on forever, until he heard a familiar 'voice' calling out what he had come to mentally call the Gungan equivalent of 'hey you' from Kermit. He looked briefly away from the armed Gungan to the three figures behind them. He wasn't sure, they all looked pretty much alike except for their size, but the short one between the other two could be Kermit. It was certainly doing a bunch of talking. The croak/hiss/growls were flowing like crazy, and the three-fingered hands were flying around in a way that reminded Sheppard almost painfully of Rodney McKay at his most eloquent. Whatever it was saying, the taller ones seemed to be listening. He noticed, without taking his eyes off the armed ones again that Kermit, it had to be, was gesturing toward the facility slightly behind them and then back at Sheppard. The exposition went on for a while, finally ending up with Kermit trying to go toward Sheppard, only to be held back by one of the taller figures. The other one that had stood back stepped forward and with a wave of its hand motioned the armed ones back. They fell back until they were behind the three others, but the spear guns remained trained on Sheppard. Okay, cautious, but evidently willing to talk. He could deal with that.

He saw no need for them to stand out in the cold to make gestures at each other, so he pointed to himself and then the group, and then toward the facility. There was a short conference, with Kermit's slightly higher voice sounding above the deeper ones of the others. It seemed to be encouraging the conference. Finally the one that seemed to be in charge, unlike Kermit it had two membranes running from the front of it's head to the back, in kind of a Mohawk thing-he noticed none of the others had the "frill" and wondered if it was a leader-type decoration-nodded and swept its hand toward the facility in a 'lead the way' gesture. Sheppard could think of no really good reason not to let them in, so he did so. He supposed they could kill him and take what he had, or maybe worse, take what he had and not kill him, but what did he really have that they could possibly want? They had food and shelter and weapons of their own. With one thought he could turn off the facility, and it would do them no good. If they had wanted him dead they could have put one of those spears in his back when he wasn't expecting it, he suspected that they had some pretty good range on them. Time to give them the benefit of the doubt. He led the way into the facility. Once everyone was in he thought the door closed, and everyone but Kermit spun to stare at it.

He thought the heat up, and another stir of amazement went through the crowd as they felt the warm air waft over them. Kermit's voice came from the back of the group where it had been pushed, evidently for protection. Even with the communication problem Sheppard heard a definite note of 'I told you so' in the youngster's voice. It looked like his praises had been sung long and loud, but not believed. There was a discussion going on between most of the group, except for two of the spear gun holders who kept a wary eye on Sheppard. With a shrug he pulled off his coat and draped it over a convenient protuberance on the wall. As far as he could tell it was only there for exactly that, and he was pretty sure that the facility had 'grown' it for that very purpose.

The discussion did not seem to be waning, so he slumped down on his improvised chair and crossed his arms, ready to wait it out. He wasn't sure what was going on, but it always paid to make nice to the neighbors. It was several minutes before Kermit pushed his way through the larger Gungan and stood before Sheppard with what he assumed was the amphibian version of a grin. It was a little on the toothy side for comfort. The smaller amphibian pointed at the chalkboard and chalk, then at the formula on the walls. It was jabbering away over its shoulder at one of the adults. The one it must have been speaking to was staring at the wall in what Sheppard thought might be fascination. It moved to the wall and lifted a hand to part of the formula. It ran a hand along the equation. Sheppard wondered if maybe these people were a little more advanced than he had given them credit for.

The Maya and Aztec, peoples who had practiced ritual sacrifice, had developed sophisticated mathematics to describe the movement of the stars and sun, and had developed the idea of zero. They had plotted calendars millennia into the future with an accuracy that 'civilized' man couldn't match until the creation of computers. These people lived in a fluid much denser than air, they would have to deal with the movement of that fluid on a moment-to-moment basis, and have an instinctive knowledge of how it moved. It was not too far fetched to believe that they might have developed mathematics to explain the movement of the liquid that nurtured them their entire lives.

Sheppard had always believed that mathematics was the universal language. On Earth he could have presented an equation to another mathematician, and no matter what his race or language. The other person would understand it. It remained to be seen if the language was truly universal. The others all waited while the one examining the wall moved from one wall to the next. The creature was halfway through the equations on the second wall when it gave a huff. It lifted one hand, and before Sheppard could say anything, or do more than jump to his feet it had wiped out one section of the equation.

"Hey!" he said indignantly. The creature looked at him and then at the charcoal that he had been using to write on the wall. It picked up the piece of burnt wood and started writing. Sheppard moved closer, ignoring how the spear gun bearers tensed. Soon he was standing right behind the creature, watching as it slowly filled the area back in. He could see immediately that the creature was correcting his formula, and that it was right! He stared, and then his mind started working. He picked up another piece of the charcoal and wiped out another section of the equation, which was dependant on the first. As he worked the correction through out his formula, he was vaguely aware that the creature had stepped back and was watching him, but he needed to get this down while it was so obvious. How had he missed that before? Five minutes later he put down the charcoal and brushed off his hands. The creature, the one he had decided to call Lighthill, after the premier fluid dynamics mathematician on Earth, was nodding, a look of satisfaction on its face. Sheppard grinned at it and offered his hand. The creature stared at his hand for a moment, then reached out its own and grasped Sheppard's. Sheppard gently closed his hand around the thinner hand and shook it up and down several times and then released it.

"Thank you" He said to it. It must have grasped his meaning as it bent slightly forward in a bow. That might be how they say 'you're welcome'. He offered his chair to Lighthill, thinking perhaps that it might be a leader among its people, given the deference the others had shown its reading of the formula. It accepted his offer with another bow, seating itself. The others, except for one who went to stand near Lighthill, sank to the floor, moving comfortably into kneeling positions. Sheppard, not sure that his knees were up to kneeling on the hard floor for any length of time, went and sat on his bed. It was a little awkward, since the air mattress wasn't very high off the floor, but it gave him room to cross his legs so he was sitting kind of comfortably. He looked at Lighthill, though he was aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Kermit practically vibrating with what Sheppard thought was excitement. Something was going on, the question was, what?

Lighthill gestured toward the chalkboard, and the standing Gungan went and got it along with the chalk. It held the board in front of Lighthill, and it began drawing or writing something. Sheppard couldn't see what it was, and had to wait for almost five minutes before the creature lowered the chalk and nodded to the other. It turned the board around and showed it to Sheppard. He stared at it in amazement. There before him was Atlantis. Not every spire, pier, and walkway, but enough of an outline to be very recognizable, especially the central tower. Even in this crude drawing her beauty called to him, and he had to tamp down a longing that twisted in his gut. He lifted his eyes to meet those of Lighthill who had been watching his expression closely. From the look he was getting, he had not hid his amazement from the creature very well. He sighed, what did it really matter anyway? Evidently these people had their own suspicions about his origins.

After he had gotten over his initial reaction, he took another look at the drawing. He now noticed that there were people in the city, and over their heads were the Ancient symbols. These were Ancients. As if noticing where his eyes were looking Lighthill pointed to one of the figures and then at Sheppard. It took him a moment to understand; they thought he was an Ancient, one of the ones that had probably created, or at the very least had nurtured, their race. Evidently they knew that the Ancients had come from Atlantis, had perhaps even been there themselves, or their ancestors had, and had preserved the picture in their lore. He shook his head, firmly. He was not going to claim to be an Ancient. That way only led to trouble. He tried to think of a way to express the idea of descendants through pictographs. Finally he rose up and went to stand by the board. He pointed at the city.

"Atlantis" He said clearly. He made ran a hand over the whole drawing of the city. "Atlantis" He said again. Lighthill studied him for a moment then said a word in its own language, one three fingered hand coming up to point at the drawing. Once again it was not a sound that Sheppard could duplicate. Damn this was frustrating. He shook it off and pointed to one of the figures.

"Ancients" He said. These people probably had another name for them, possibly even thought of them as Gods. But he was not going to promote the Ancients as Gods thing. He had seen their fallibility in too many things to even think that it was true, but he wasn't going to interfere with someone else's ideas on the subject. Lighthill said another word, presumably their word for the Ancients. Sheppard pointed to the Ancient figure and then to himself and shook his head. Realizing that the gesture might not mean anything to them he picked up the chalk from where Lighthill had laid it down, and after pointing to himself again. Drew a line through the figure.

Lighthill considered again, and then gestured around at the facility with an obvious question. Sheppard wracked his brain trying to figure out how to express his relation to the ancients in a drawing. He grasped his chunk of chalk and drew two figures. Over one, the taller of the two he made the sign for the Ancients. The second figure he made smaller. He drew the same symbol over it, but smaller. Then he drew a third figure, smaller, and then another, smaller still. Over the last he did not put a symbol over. He pointed to the first figure.

"Ancients, what you call Ancestors." He pointed to the symbol. Lighthill nodded. He then pointed to the smaller and smaller figures in succession, and then finally at the smallest he then pointed at himself. Lighthill had narrowed its eyes in thought. It said something to the other non-guard adult; the one that was sitting with Kermit, John decided to call him/her Michigan, keeping with the famous frog theme. That one said something back and nodded. Lighthill rose and walked over to the two and pointed at the one that had spoken and then to the next to smallest figure on the board. It then pointed at Kermit and then to the smallest figure. "_By gum I think they've got it_." He thought with a smile. Lighthill returned it with the toothy grimace he had grown used to with Kermit.

Lighthill gestured to two of the "guards" and Michigan and they all huddled together and started talking rapidly in their strange sounding language. Kermit took the lack of adult supervision as tacit approval to move to John's side. He bounced excitedly on his toes, looking so like a human child that John had to grin and reach out to pat the smaller being. He hoped that this all worked out all right. He would appreciate having some company, even if they didn't speak a common language. Kermit was burbling something at him, and reaching for the chalk when the adults broke their huddle. Lighthill moved back to sit on the chair, and reached into its robes. John, still cautious, took a step away from Kermit, ready to move if the other being was taking out some kind of weapon.

Instead of an obvious weapon, Lighthill produced what appeared to be a small cube in what could only be that peculiar metal/ceramic that the Ancients seemed to make a majority of their items. It seemed to be a solid cube but when Lighthill held it out toward John in its long-fingered hand it suddenly started to glow a gentle blue. There was a mummer from the two guards, and Kermit began talking excitedly to Michigan, who shushed the smaller being. Lighthill began to speak.

"It is good that a descendant of the Creators has come to us once again. We had thought that we would never know of their fate. I am YHG" John's jaw dropped open in astonishment at the smooth, even cultured, English that seemed to flow from Lighthill's lips. Such was his amazement that it took him a moment to understand that it was the cube that was translating what Lighthill was saying in his own mind, much as the stargate did for others. The last word didn't make any sense, but the rest was clear. But did it work both ways?

"Uh…yeah about that. I'm afraid I have some bad news about the Ancients, those you call the Creators, they were pretty much ran out of the galaxy by the Wraith about ten thousand years ago. Uh…you do know about the Wraith…right?" Evidently it did work since he could see the impact of his words on those listening. It suddenly struck him that he might be messing with their religion. After all if they called the Ancients, "Creators", there was the possibility. But there was no outburst about heresy; Lighthill only gave the gesture he had come to recognize as a nod.

"We had thought it was something of this nature. We are aware of those you call the Wraith. They come here in their crafts that swim through the air, through the Creator's doorway. When the Creator's no longer came, and only the Wraith were seen, we assumed that the Wraith had destroyed them." Okay, so not deities evidently.

"Well, they didn't destroy them, but they made things hot enough for them that they went somewhere else, somewhere that there aren't any Wraith. That's where I come from."

"Ah, then you are created by the Creator's as we are." Lighthill said. Sheppard grimaced. Explaining this was almost as awkward as the drawing thing.

Well, as far as we can tell, it was more a matter of them…" He made a kind of gesture with his hands that he sort of hoped was self-explanatory. From the silence that followed it became obvious that it didn't. He glanced at Kermit and leaned slightly toward Lighthill. "They kind of mixed their genes with the people that were already on the planet when they got there." He said softly. He felt suddenly as if he were discussing sex with his grandmother. He hoped that they wouldn't notice the blush that he could feel creeping up his cheeks. As it turned out he needn't have worried about that, it seemed that his words caused another stir among his listeners. Sheppard was interested to note that either the cube could evidently tell what was and wasn't meant to be translated or there was a proximity thing going on with it. He could not understand what the two guards were saying. After a few moments Lighthill shushed the others and turned back to him.

"Your species is like the Creators'. The female's egg is fertilized within the body and the child develops inside her. It is a more efficient system given the environment in which you live." It said. Sheppard, well aware that his blush had deepened, nodded. He tried not to think about just what 'system' of reproduction these beings might use given their environment. He also tried not to think about all those biology lectures and movies showing frogs in a pile. He felt a sudden pulse of cold air as the facility, evidently mistaking his blush for being overheated, acted to cool him off. He thought the heat back up and forcibly put the pictures out of his head.

"Yeah…well there's a certain percentage of our population that have what we call the Ancient gene, that means that we can use the machines that they left behind." He waved a hand to indicate the facility. "Like this place."

"I see." Lighthill said. "Then we are not of the same origin, though the Creator's are involved in both our people's beginnings. Perhaps this similarity can be a bridge across the chasm that separates our kinds and we can avoid the turmoil that has marked our interactions before." It took Sheppard a few moments to understand what Lighthill was referring to, but then he remembered the pictures of a war between humans and the Gungan.

"About that, I understand that there was some kind of incident, that maybe a human, one of my kind, possibly killed one of your kind, and things kind of escalated from there." He hoped there weren't any hard feelings.

"We are the #&KI(&."The translator seemed unable to translate the last word, and Sheppard assumed it was the name of their kind. Looked like he was going to have to stick with Gungan. The word that it had messed up before must have been Lighthill's actual name. Lighthill turned to Michigan and Kermit and made a gesture toward the door. Kermit protested, and Michigan reached over and slapped the smaller being on its wrist. It wasn't a hard slap, but Kermit's defiant look changed to one of chastisement, and the two left the facility. Sheppard watched them go and then turned back to look at Lighthill with a raised eyebrow. Evidently whatever the other was about to reveal was not for young ears.

"There was more than one murder, in fact in the end it might be that the one single act will be the end of all of us." Lighthill said sadly. It looked at him, and saw that he was waiting for more of an explanation. "After the Creator's left us we waited many, many years for them to return. We were anxious to show them how we had succeeded, how we had built upon the basics that they had given us. The Creator's did not return. However, one day there came through the Creator's doorway a…human, like you but not. They could not use the Creator's machines, could not even enter this facility. It became clear to us that they had no designs upon our homes or hunting grounds, and we did not begrudge them the dry place. We even tried to warn them of the creatures that walk the large dry space there." Lighthill waved toward the mainland. "You have seen the great flying killer, you saved &H#GY from one. It is one of the smaller things that live there."

Sheppard was suddenly very glad he had not attempted to make it to the mainland. He didn't really want to end up as a snack for a Pegasus galaxy dinosaur. Wouldn't look good in the biography that he was sure someone would be writing about him someday. Not. He shook off his dither about his method of demise and tuned back into what Lighthill was saying.

"They did not heed our warning. Perhaps it was not given in a manner that was clear. As you can see our languages are not similar, and the cube of the Creators would not work with those humans." Well he could understand that, you could only do so much with sign language and drawing, and there was no telling if the humans that were here believed the stories even if they DID understand. After all most of the planets they had been to so far had only small creatures not unlike the squirrel-things, though Teyla and Ronan assured him that there were some larger predators, more wolf-like than anything, and nothing like a polar bear or a lion, or, heaven forbid, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And since they had no gene, there was no translator available.

"Many of the humans died, and they blamed our ancestors. It might have ended there, had not the humans made a fatal mistake. The Creators made those things which rule the large dry place and they are more intelligent than the humans thought. When their hunting party retreated, dragging their wounded and those dead that they could collect with them, the creatures followed. The humans managed to stop them at the bridge between the two dry places, but it was a stopgap measure only. The creatures saw them as a source of food, and were determined to break through. It was a battle of attrition on both sides, but the creatures breed quickly, and were many, and the humans were less fecund, and so were few. They had lost many of their best warriors in that first trip. They came to our ancestors and asked for help, but there was little we could offer. We have only small weapons." It pointed to the spear guns that that the guards held. "As we could not live long in their world they could not live in ours, so we could offer no shelter. We offered food, but it was not sufficient to them. They were angry, fearful. Perhaps they thought we wished them ill." Lighthill stood and paced across the room and back again. It looked down at Sheppard where he was now leaning one shoulder against the wall. "I…can not say that there were not those who did wish them gone, but I do not believe that there was any active motive on my people's part to harm the humans. But it was long ago, and I cannot speak to it in truth.

"There are those among our kind who feel what happened next was intentional. They have used it as an excuse to push a non-involvement agenda for all the years since it happened. As such we have had no contact with those of your kind in almost 500 turns of the seasons. And because of the cost, I can almost…" Some emotion that Sheppard could not figure out moved through the golden eyes, if it had been human he would have called it sadness, an anguish so deep that it almost made him want to reach out, to offer some comfort, but he was too new to these…people to figure it out for sure, and he didn't want to offend. It continued the story.

"The humans could have left through the Creator's doorway, but they were stubborn, determined to remain. While we of course do not know all of their reasoning, there are some records left by our ancestors as to what was observed. We have pieced together what must have happened. A small party went through the doorway and returned with almost twenty very large and very heavy boxes. They took those boxes out onto the bridge at it narrowest point, where they had built their barricade against the creatures. They placed the boxes in a line across that point and retreated back onto their home place. Those watching said that the humans moved the females and small ones to the far side and only a few remained here. They caused a trail of fire to move from the dry place onto the bridge and then there was a fountain of fire and heat that flew up into the sky. It caused the ground to shake where the watchers stood far away. It was unlike anything we had seen before or since. The sound was like the sea in the strongest of storms. The observer was horribly frightened, but managed to stay in place. Once the smoke and dust cleared he saw that the center of the bridge was gone, and more and more was crumbling away as he watched. A huge wave of water was sweeping away across the bay. It was…devastation." There was no mistaking the horror in the alien voice this time.

"I understand that your people had never seen high explosives before, the chemicals that made the sound and heat, but it did solve the problem for the humans, and you weren't using the bridge yourselves. What was the problem? Were your ancestors afraid that the humans would use the explosives on your home?" An unbalance of power could have made people nervous. It had happened time and again on Earth. But Lighthill was making that gesture he had figured out meant "no".

"The method was unfamiliar, that is true, but it was the, and I believe this with the dispassion of distance and time, _unintended_ effect of that action which caused such rancor between our kinds."

"I don't understand, what unintended effect?" Sheppard asked. Lighthill sighed and reseated itself. It leaned forward.

"To truly understand I must tell you how our kind differs from yours…beyond the obvious." Lighthill gave him a smile. He smiled back. Maybe they _could_ be friends after all, despite whatever it was that hung so heavy between their species. "Your females bear their young within their bodies, is this not so?" His smile dropped away. Oh no! He was not going to get into a discussion of human reproduction practices with a…well, it wasn't exactly a frog, but come on! Lighthill smiled again and waved aside what it must have recognized as his unease.

"Ah…I see that the male of your species is not any more comfortable discussing these things than those of my own." It…no, he was pretty sure now that it was SHE, looked over at the guards. He looked over at them too and saw that they were shifting nervously and if he was not mistaken, were both looking a little greener than they had been. Evidently Gungan could blush. So, that probably meant that the "frill" on Lighthill's head was probably gender specific, and not a leadership thing. Well that would make one thing easier. She was continuing so he pulled his attention back from physiology.

"In contrast, _our_ young gestate outside our bodies, in what we refer to as a hatchery, and we only produce eggs every fifteen years." Sheppard had to forcibly push back the image of the biology films he had seen as a child with frogs and big bundles of clear eggs in clumps in ponds. Oblivious to his turn of mind she continued. "These hatcheries were built by the Creators as the eggs must be kept in carefully controlled environments as they gestate. A small change in temperature or water chemistry can effect a whole generation. We have a basic knowledge of the operation of the hatcheries, passed down through the ages since the Creators left, but anything beyond simple repairs is just that…beyond us. When the bridge between the dry places was destroyed and it fell into the waters of the bay two of our hatcheries were destroyed outright, along with the eggs that were there. Two others were damaged to a point that we could not repair them, and they lay fallow to this day. Only one of the hatcheries survived, and the eggs were almost all damaged. Only a few survived. An entire generation almost, wiped out in a second of heat and light." A tear fell from the corner of Lighthill's eye, and she looked away. Sheppard could not help but feel the other being's pain. Even if it was from centuries before he had been born. He gave Lighthill a moment to get herself together and then asked the question that he was pretty sure he knew the answer to. He knew what he would have done in the same circumstances, and it did not include stopping for a dose of perspective.

"That's when the war started, between your kind and mine. Your ancestors drove the rest of the humans off the planet and made it so that they wouldn't come back." The Gungan probably had no idea that removing the crystal only kept the gate from dialing out, but it had obviously been effective so it really didn't matter.

"Yes. The watcher, ()&, he struck the first blow. He killed the man who had set the flame. It escalated from there. In the end, when the dark came again and the humans feared to hunt the waters, they had no food to sustain them here. We raided their gardens, destroyed their traps. In the end they decided to leave. A few came back through the doorway, but they were hunted down and killed when they found they could not go back through. It was a…dark time for both our peoples."

"So you've been alone here, since then." He looked out the window at Kermit who was once again holding forth to the adult who had to be a parent. "Obviously you can still have some children. The one hatchery is working still, right." Lighthill nodded.

"It functioned adequately for the last hatching, but…" She hesitated, obviously making some sort of decision. Her eyes searched his for a moment. "My people are dying, Daywalker." Evidently the cube had given up on the proper name thing and had gone with a literal translation of whatever they were calling him, "The hatchery has malfunctioned. & is the youngest of the last generation of our people. Even if it were working, there are diseases that we cannot control in many of the offspring we do have, and we fear for future generations, if there are any. In the end, I am not sure that we triumphed in the war with your kind, or merely delayed the inevitable." Sheppard felt a knife turn in his heart at the sorrow in the other being's eyes. Damn, leave it to him to get stranded on a planet where the natives were in even worse straights than he was.

"_If only_…" He diverted that thought right there. He wasn't going to delve into the possibilities of his still being in contact with Atlantis. It was a slippery slope that led only to more depression. "_But McKay could fix up their machines in the two damaged hatcheries, allowing them to have much more genetic diversity in their next generation_. _And Carson could probably help them with the congenital diseases._" The thought made it out anyway. He groaned to himself and thunked himself on the forehead. "Knock it off, John." He told himself out loud, and found Lighthill staring at him strangely. He gave her a small smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

"I…used to know someone, actually a group of someones that could have helped you." He explained.

"Indeed?" she asked in interest. 'They are like you, offspring of the Creators?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say they are. More or less." No need to go into the gene therapy. "One is a doctor, a specialist in genetic diseases, he could help your children. The other is…" _My-former- best friend_. He shook off the stray thought. "The other is a…mechanic of sorts. He knows the Ancient's machines, can fix them. He could possibly have fixed your hatcheries. We could have helped. Would have once."

"But now?"

"Now…" He held out his hands. "What you see is what you get. One slightly used _ex_-military commander. You need a Ford or a Chevy overhauled, or even a GE T700 from a Pave-Hawk, I'm your man. Need a bandage on your boo boo? I'm good. Beyond that…not worth much except as a light switch for technology that doesn't do you any good. I was kicked to the curb. Forcibly retired. Given the boot. Pink Slipped. Abandoned…Lt Colonel Robinson Caruso at your service." His voice had unconsciously risen as he talked, sarcasm pouring out from the bitter well he had only covered up, not dealt with as he had told himself again and again. He was on his feet, hands clenched as he suddenly realized that the guards had gone from casually leaning against the wall to high alert with spear guns pointed. He raised his hands, consciously unfurling his fists and trying to look harmless. It wasn't much of a stretch. He sighed and sank back down on his bed. "I can't do much besides say that I'm sorry." He said softly. Lighthill, who had not seemed to be scared of his anger, studied him. He knew the cube had probably had probably not translated much of what he had said, but something in her eyes said that she did understand.

"Why are you here, Daywalker? You came with supplies as if prepared to stay, but you do not wish to be here." Okay, so she got a lot of it.

"My…people," He wouldn't say 'friends', those people that had allowed this were _not_ his friends, "They were affected by something, by someone. I was the only one that didn't fall under his spell, and he had me exiled here. He knew that the gate didn't work, that I couldn't go back, or anywhere else for that matter. Like I said, a sort of forced retirement from my former position."

"The only ones that have left this place in many centuries are Wraith. They can operate the Creator's doorway in some other way. They do not need the crystal, but even they come only in their flyers. Is this one who had you exiled a Wraith?" Sheppard shook his head.

"No, not a Wraith, but he's a trader. He's been to a lot of places, and has heard a lot of things. Probably had a chance to talk to some Wraith worshiper somewhere that told him what was up here." A sudden realization came to him. "He kept the information for when he needed a place to send people he didn't want to see any more. I'm probably not the first person he's sent here. Those others, the ones that came through the doorway, has that been in the last twenty years or so?" He gave Lucius the benefit of the doubt on the time. Surely he hadn't been a bastard all his miserable life. Lighthill consulted with one of the guards.

"There has indeed been increased activity in the last thirty years. Before that we saw only one or two in all the years since the others were driven away. In the last thirty years there have been twenty three." Sheppard scowled and pounded his fist against his thigh. Twenty-three people, condemned to this hellhole, all because of one man, it had to be. What he wouldn't give to get his hands around that flabby neck…Lighthill was watching him with what he could only call sympathy. She seemed to understand his anger, his pain. Maybe she did. Her people had been abandoned by the "Creators" millennia ago, leaving them subject to the whims of fortune with little hope of help in a galaxy of people that didn't even share a species, much less a language. He looked away, gnawing on his lower lip. It didn't seem fair to tell these people that there was someone out there who could help them, but there was no way to get to them.

Of course there was the fact that they wouldn't know about this place if he hadn't been sent here, and the gate wouldn't be useless if the original humans hadn't gotten all jiggy with whatever passed for TNT in this galaxy at the time, probably something from the Genii. And if the Gungan hadn't had the natural knee-jerk reaction to an act of terrorism, intended or not, and driven off the humans and took the gate crystal, well…In the end it resulted in pretty much everyone getting the shaft. He snorted a laugh. Great, he had company in hell, and they were worse off than he was. Hard to feel quite so bad off when an entire species was dying out just off the shore of his little forced retirement village. He sighed and looked back at Lighthill.

"I am sorry. I wished that I could help you somehow. As it is I can't even take a look at it since it's underwater. Not that I think I could do much with it, but I have seen a lot of Ancient stuff and I know some…" He stopped himself from rattling on. Lighthill considered him for several moments then said something to one of the guards who left the room and brought back Kermit and Michigan. Lighthill spoke at some length to the other three adults while Kermit practically danced around the room playing with the various things that it recognized. Sheppard couldn't help but be amused by the youthful exuberance, but then he remembered that this child was possibly the last of his race, that there might be no more Gungan after him.

He noticed that the discussion between the adults seemed to be getting rather heated, and wished that the cube wasn't quite so selective in its range, or maybe it operated completely on intent, and since Lighthill wasn't talking to him it didn't felt the need to translate. Damn the Ancient's and their 'mental component' anyway. After several minutes more some sort of agreement seemed to be reached, and Lighthill approached again.

"There are many secrets among my people, Daywalker. There are only few a handfuls that know the true story of the war between our people. Few beyond this room know that the last hatchery has failed. Some see the declining health of our youth and suspect that our people are dying, but it is not something that anyone dares speculate on in public. We in the leadership tell ourselves that we are simply trying to avoid panic, that telling the people will do no good, but we are fooling ourselves. We are hoping against hope that there is some solution; that some miracle will take place and we will be saved. That the Creator's will return and repair the hatcheries, that _something_ will happen. There are those among the leadership that feel that this is a judgment from on high. That we have offended the Creators in some way, and this is their punishment. They have resigned themselves to our end." She waved a hand to indicate the guards and Kermit's father who had moved close to listen.

"We, and some others, do not feel that this is preordained, that there is no escape. We are prepared to take steps that the others of our kind are…reluctant to take. There are laws, laws that have been in place for many centuries, that we are prepared to break. It may mean our deaths or banishment from our homes, but we are prepared to take the chance. But to do this, we needed help, help we did not know how to seek, until you came, and saved (#. You are the first of your kind that we have interacted with on a face-to-face basis in over five hundred years. It is forbidden for any of our kind to do so. In the past those who came were…dealt with." Sheppard wasn't sure but he thought he detected a deepening in the green color of the other's face. It was blushing. Of course, the admission that your people were sanctioning what amounted to murder was a blush-worthy offense as far as he was concerned. "If they knew of our existence at all, they took the knowledge to their death soon after. I will not attempt to justify that policy to you, I do not believe it can be. Nor will I ask your forgiveness. But I would ask you to help us." Sheppard blinked at her in amazement.

He was having a hard time believing all of this. One minute he's happily- relatively- snowshoeing around the island, the next he's having a small house party with the local amphibian species, who have evidently been knocking off stray humans for the last five hundred years, and the next after that he's the recipient of a plea for help from a renegade faction of that same species. He never saw this kind of stuff coming. He realized Lighthill was looking for some kind of response. He looked around at the others, and down at Kermit who had come to sit next to him on his bed. He looked back at Lighthill.

"I'll help you with whatever I can, but I really don't know what I can do." He said. He had to help even if it was just to be sure he didn't join the previous human occupants of the island. But it wasn't just that. Now that he knew them, knew what they faced, that part of him that had always got him trouble in the past, that part that made him do what he _knew_ was right, drove him to it. Lighthill stared at him for a moment, considering his sincerity he thought, then reached a hand out to one of the guards. The guard unslung a small leather bag from around his shoulders and handed it to Lighthill. She laid it gently on her lap and opened the top. She reached inside and started to pull something out as she looked up at him.

"We had hoped that you could use this…"


End file.
